But I needed some different behaviors. For my heading to work shortcut, I rarely listen to music on my way to work. Usually it’s podcasts, sometime audible, occasionally music. So I needed a way to choose what I wanted to listen to. So I created a choose from menu ask between those things:
Podcasts plays my Castro queue (could easily swap for overcast)
Audible just opens audible:// and then waits for you to return to shortcuts
Music plays my friends mix on Apple Music.
My headed home shortcut keeps the changes above but adds some additional complexity. I park in an underground garage at work and it can take forever for my phone to reconnect to the network. The lack of connection causes the shortcut to fail completely. One thing that helps get the phone back on the network is to toggle cellular data. So:
I use an action to turn off cellular data
Then wait 30 seconds (to get out of garage)
turn cellular back in
wait 10 seconds (to reconnect to the network)
continue with the shortcut.
The second change I made is a message action that texts my wife with my eta.
Finally, I deleted the alert that was displayed in the original shortcut because I don’t have a use for it.
My “Going Home” shortcuts does a whole lot of things.
It gets the weather, and the time of sunset.
It calculates my travel time, and it calculates my ETA as well.
It texts my wife with where I am, what time I’ll be home, and how long my travel time is.
It tells me if Sunset is within an hour (This will affect the route I take).
It sets my nest thermostats.
It sets two Hue scenes (one for bedroom and one for the livingroom).
It “resumes” Overcast for my tech (named " ️ ") playlist.
The final thing it does is compose a message to my son with my ETAm which I usually cancel but sometimes he needs to know when I am getting home. This action has to be last since cancelling a message would stop the shortcut.
If you did want to change the order for the SMS, you could potentially capture a brief dictation (in response to say spoken text of “SMS son?”), and then if it matches to “Yes” in an “If” action, carry out the SMS action as part of that “If” matched block.
yeah, I could do that but then it would interfere with the podcast starting. Also, it would require me to make a decision right when I am starting to drive. This way, it will be at the first stop light when I either tap cancel or send on the SMS.
I have considered making a separate shortcut that runs my home ETA shortcut and then sends a message to my son.
Oh, the sunset portion and the overcast portion and the nest part are all shortcuts on their own that this shortcut runs.
The point was in reference to moving that step - as per your point about it having to be last.
In terms of making a decision right when you are starting to drive, I would have thought priming all the activity before beginning to drive would be the safest approach in terms of safety and so I’d be considering putting this as the first check. I might even consider building in a few variations for the list and speaking to trigger it.
Based on that you could also trigger a Siri Shortcut such as “Going Home” or “Going Home Son”, the latter triggering the former and then putting the SMS step in at the end.
️ ") playlist.