iOS Beta 13 advanced automations gone for good?

With the latest iOS 13 beta, starting to look like the really cool advanced automations aren’t going to be put back in and won’t make it into the first official release?

I would assume at this point that they will come back, but (like features such as “Group FaceTime”) they might not be in the “point zero” release. But Federico Viticci was told they were coming back, so I’m hoping that is still the case.

Just a matter of “wait and see” now, I guess.

What do you mean by “cool advanced automations”? Do you just mean some of the new triggers that were dropped in beta 6?

  • Shortcuts automations are temporarily unavailable. (53182885)

Source: iOS & iPadOS 13 Beta 6 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

If so, do note that Apple used the term “temporarily”, so “gone for good” - unlikely. In the “first official release”, at this stage also unlikely; but not impossible.

Presumably they had too many issues to resolve in time and from what I’ve read from ex-Apple engineers, at this point Apple are focused on small fixes and Polish. Anything that may not definitely all be resolved in time is deprioritised.

I would expect the triggers to come eventually, but only Apple can judge for sure and I would say 13.1 would be optimistic as that’ll be focused on fixes for released features. Maybe 13.2, but if there are a lot of issues with tricky comp-sci challenges to solve, then it could even be 14.

I would not throw timeframes around just yet. The way this beta cycle is going, nothing is ready for release in september. EVERYTHING is still a nightmare.

Unfortunately, I’m still no clearer on what exactly it is that is being referred to (I asked and guessed at a possibility above), or what the question / key point from the OP actually is that’s up for discussion :man_shrugging:t2:

Agree this will not make the final release. They did not get it right when making essentially reminders instead of automation. They need to rethink the whole concept.

Just in case it was what I was guessing the OP was on about, this might be noteworthy. But it would still be useful to get some clarity on what the phrase “advanced automations” refers to.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios_ipados_release_notes/ios_ipados_13_1_beta_release_notes

Back but still crippled.

If that’s “crippled” automation for you, then it sounds like it might be worth you trying an Android device instead. Lots more open automation options on that platform vs. i*OS.

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I would insist having to manually activate an automation defeats the whole purpose of automation. It’s like being reminded to turn on the alarm before it rings, it’s stupid. As for the why there is no reason, levels of paranoid management comes to mind.

I have to agree. I made a Shortcut to setup my iPhone before worship services every week so it won’t go off during church (volume 0, DND on, Airplane Mode, brightness 100%, launch Big Clock HD).

The purpose was to replace the previous shortcut which I had to remember to trigger manually. I had a Due.app reminder set for each Sunday to remind me to enable it.

Having to manually approve it to run at the date and time I told it to run is insanely stupid and does not count as “automation” in my book. The Due.app reminder is better than the Shortcuts reminder because it will go off more than once.

Likewise, I have another Shortcut that I want to run 30 minutes after the end of church to disable Airplane mode and DND and set the volume back to 75%. Guess what? I don’t hear the reminder for that because everything is set to not make any noise or vibration. Which defeats the whole purpose of “automation” I’d say.

Using the Home app, I can set my HomeKit-compatible garage doors to close automatically at 11pm if one or both of them are open. If the Home app prompted me at 11pm every night “Do you want to close the garage doors?” I would not consider that “automation” either.

Apple has been super cautious with iOS since the original iPhone’s lack of an SDK and 3rd party apps. 10+ years later we’re nowhere near as advanced as I expected we’d be. I thought Shortcuts automation was going to be a huge step forward, but not the way that Apple has crippled it.

Agree with you, it is not until you start to use it you discover how useless it becomes with the notification to run. I even wrote Craig (VP apple) an email about this, it´s freakin nuts.

This would have totally replaced IFTTT for me if it worked as expected. I imagined it tracking my work hours, promting wife when im late, setting up darkmode along with screen brightness volume etc when it gets dark.

Now my sense is that this is not the doing of the Shortcuts team rather some one scared to death putting this power in users hands and i cannot figure out why? If you are scared of malicious shortcuts being run automaticly then dont make triggered downloads available in the store or online, solved!

It is so frustrating because this could have been awsome, now i wont even use it since it´s just worthless, there is in essence no difference than me setting a reminder myself to run a shortcut.