Beginner's guide

I’ve recently downloaded Scriptable and am excited to try it out based on what I’ve already seen. My one issue is that I don’t know where to begin. I am a front-end programmer by trade, so the JavaScript side is not a problem - what is a problem is that I actually don’t quite know where to start. Is there a beginner’s guide, a how-to guide or list of best practices to create widgets and scripts?

For me, I’d love to know how one codes the scripts and gets them in the app? Is it loads of copy/pasting? or is there a better way like saving scripts to an iCloud folder that the app can read from?

I’m sure I’m not the only one here who has these issues. Anyway, any tips on your process would be much appreciated.

Cheers

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I find that examples are often shared via Github Gists and the Widget Topic has a ton of examples. @simonbs often retweets interesting scripts too.

I’ve found the easiest way to make scripts is to open them on the Mac from the Scriptable folder. (On my computer Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud~dk~simonbs~Scriptable

There’s also a recent thread which @sylumer posted his setup for loading the drafts/scriptable typescript declaration files in to VSCode.

In terms of figuring out where to begin, I’ve found it useful to look at some of Apple’s sample shortcuts and reimplement them in Scriptable. Just to get familiar with the documentation, the limits Scriptable has as a third party app, and for figuring out where Scriptable works better than Shortcuts for automations. (One I recently discovered is how much better date comparison is in JS. I wanted to have a check if the current datetime is after 10PM and found no way in shortcuts but, super simple in Scriptable and able to be called inline, without opening the app)

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yeah, i’m lost as well. lol

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Thanks that’s very useful. I will take a look at your links and see if that’s gets me up and running more quickly :+1:

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