Is there a way to backup Shortcuts in the macOS Shortcuts app? I’ve searched but the generic name makes such efforts rather futile and unsatisfying. Nor did I see anything in the User Guide.
Yesterday I ran into an issue were most all of my Shortcuts had conflicts to be resolved (note that the only way I knew which had conflicts was to open each and look; I saw no other indication of the issue). Opening the Shortcut presented a window that showed two versions, with create/change dates, a checkbox to select each, and a button to save the selected items. Despite having a ⓘ next to each Shortcut, clicking it did nothing, no info was displayed. To see any info about the Shortcut I had to first save it. Non-optimal in this situation (if there is some way to see the Shortcut in this situation without first saving please let me know.)
I selected to save both, and fortunately they were saved individually, appending a numerical digit to the name to distinguish each, and then deleted the incorrect one, which was always the version with the most recent date. Note the change dates were not the same for each pair of Shortcuts, although they were all in October and November of this year (2024 for future readers). I do not know what triggered the creation of the newer version. If anyone has insight into the cause please let me know.
As I do not yet have many Shortcuts, this was not too painful an exercise.
Additional background info. I use Touch Portal running on an original iPad Air as my “bunch of buttons” device. It allows me to use the Air which would have otherwise been retired to a landfill. I have several buttons setup that run Shortcuts. Yesterday one, which toggles a smart plug to turn on/off a lamp in my home office, stopped working. Others, including one using the same (double) smart outlet to toggle a fan under my desk worked. Triggering the outlet for the lamp in the Home app also worked. Troubleshooting lead me to the issue in Shortcuts. Note that the Shortcut for the fan also had the conflict to be resolved issue, but as noted continued to work correctly. I am running macOS 14.7.1.
Again any insight as to what happened would be welcomed.
I’ve never tested BART on macOS; if fact, I haven’t comprehensively tested BART on iOS/iPadOS since Version 14.4. Since that time, I’ve taken a long hiatus from sharing shortcuts due to the constant frustration that occurred each time Apple released a new version of iOS/iPadOS. Maybe it’s better now, but at the time:
certain actions would fail and/or crash, and
the Shortcuts editor became very difficult to use with lengthy shortcuts and would often close without warning.
I suspect that the Shortcuts app is now better than those bad old days, but I’ve not taken the time to test and modify many of my more complex shortcuts, including BART. Rather, I’ve limited my new shortcuts development to simple, highly specialized automation.
I would be very surprised—no shocked—if every BART feature functions as originally designed. Use it with caution and please verify that the BART option worked as expected.
Well you were correct. Not every BART feature correctly functions. The “Help” feature failed.
However, the “Save Snapshot of My Shortcuts”, “Archive All”, and “Back Up Selected” options all appear to have worked. And the “Exit” option, that worked too.
And I was able to verify that the Shortcuts were saved correctly. Which is what I needed.
I tend to do very simple things in Shortcuts, and as such they have consistently worked for me. (Hope I didn’t just jinx myself!) Partly because of stories of issues with complex Shortcuts, and partly because I haven’t spent the time to dig in that deeply. But for the most part, even my ‘complex’ Shortcuts work as intended. So maybe the tool has improved since the iOS 14 days.
I have just started using Keyboard Maestro in earnest, and have visited the forum.
Thank you for writing and sharing BART, and for your detailed reply.
Sometime ago Fredico V. from MacStories released a shortcut that would export Shortcuts to plaintext files. I’ve automated their export in Keyboard Maestro and commit all changes to Git on weekly basis. I use this to backup many apps: DevonThink Scripts; OmniFocus; StreamDeck etc.
I’ve got a couple different methods. One of them grabs the shortcuts that are in folders and backs them up into individual zip files then zips the entire thing into one main zip
