If you had just ONE (AND ONLY ONE) automation wish for iOS15 / iPadOS15

iOS
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With WWDC on the horizon, it’s time for me to post my annual question about what your top wish is for automation on iOS/iPadOS.

The qualifying criteria for responses are:

  1. It can be as broad and all encompassing, or as nerdy and specific as you like.
  2. It must be somehow automation related and not just a general i*OS feature.
  3. There must be at least some vague chance of it or some aspect of it happening in I*OS15
    • Once again the teleportation feature still seems to be on the drawing board only.
  4. If you really can’t pick between a few different things … automate yourself a random number generator or flip a coin and select just one. The fates of automation will make the decision for you!

I am sure many of us could reel off a dream list, but the whole point is to pick just the top one from your list.

REMEMBER: If you post more than one thing, it shows you haven’t understood the question, making your post void :smiling_imp:

Q) What is the #1 automation related thing that you would love to see released in i*OS15?

Once again, I am looking forward to reading people’s ideas and seeing other automators are thinking about and hoping for. :nerd_face:

3 Likes
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Greater stability of Shortcuts being triggered from home screen (not using widget).

I switched to using the widgets because the app icon method was slower and less stable, causing me to restart on a weekly basis.

(and yes, in past years I’ve missed the point of proposing only 1 thing… sorry about that)

2 Likes
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Native Shortcuts access to the entire file system.

5 Likes
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I want to be able to open & close my garage door when I enter/leave a geofenced area without having to click a confirmation.

Yes, I know the risks. Where I live, I’m not going to accidentally trigger this unless I’m actually coming home or leaving from home.

1 Like
5

A better, including more compact, development environment.

2 Likes
6

What I want is: More Shortcut Actions for Settings.
Examples are: change Cellular Data SIM, toggle Cellular Plans, reset Cellular Statistics, change my Screen Auto-Lock time, toggle Hey Siri. The list goes on.

2 Likes
7

This has to be “SHORTCUTS ON MACOS”

3 Likes
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If you need to know more, listen to Myke talk about this as his #1 draft pick on the latest Upgrade episode.

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The question is about iOS and iPadOS. Not macOS.

The Mac already has a wide array of automation options and features to enable automation.

1 Like
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A full scheduler like cron with repeatable tasks for Shortcuts! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Ability to set call forwarding on the majority of networks that use *# codes!

2 Likes
13

I petition the judge to permit @mgguinne’s suggestion as an acceptable answer because implementing it would bring greater integration between iOS and macOS automation systems which benefits iOS and improves all-around productivity.

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My wish would be enabling robust automation for Mail, including the ability for Shortcuts to run filtering rules and extract attachments.

3 Likes
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I would love for shortcuts to gain the ability to create webhooks to be used as triggers.

EDIT: thank you @Martin_Packer for your comment, after binging on the podcast and this amazing forum, as well as better understanding how Pushcut works i now recognise the pointlessness of my initial request; I find that the automation server functionality of Pushcut somewhat helps me to avoid the confirmation problem and I‘m really excited for the implications of Shortcuts and Pushcut coming to the Mac;

2 Likes
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Nice idea. It would require a server mechanism. Also, wouldn’t that Sherlock PushCut? If it didn’t require confirmation I can see that as an advantage. But then I’d rather have a more general solution to the confirmation problem.

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I see, well maybe that would be a better solution and I should have wished for that.

(I actually really enjoy PushCut, the very reason why I found these forums is because I was looking for more ideas to use it with.)

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System-wide keyboard shortcuts to trigger a Shortcut without the Share Sheet.

If I’m looking at an image, I want to hit a keyboard shortcut to do something to that image without opening the share sheet and scrolling through a dozen other image Shortcuts I hardly ever use.

4 Likes
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Triggering location based without confirmation. Make me double opt on if you must, but have a way to just make it happen.

2 Likes
20

Conditional Switch Case would be extremely useful. Nested if statements are too hard to keep up with in the Shortcuts UI. Causes far too much unnecessary confusion having to determine which ‘If’ statement the ‘Otherwise’ and ‘End If’ belong to, especially when you have 5 or more nested ifs.

4 Likes