Shortcuts app - does it give us Folders?

Hello all,

Those lucky enough to sign up to the Beta programme for the Shortcuts app, have they allowed for organising with Folders?

Having a look at my current Workflow setup, there are quite a few workflows already, and finding the right one to trigger, sometimes takes a fair amount of scrolling!

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Not at the current time. I hope we get something like that, but right now I’m using names, colours, and a healthy dose of Launcher and Launch Center Pro to wrangle these - with a good chunk of them being found through search anyway :slight_smile:

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I use naming conventions these days for Workflow as I rely on the search rather than scanning through. There are just too many workflows for me manage by colours or through LCP/home screen, etc. Particularly when I’m working on editing a set.

A few years back I actually posted about why Workflow shouldn’t use folders!

I think there’s a smarter way to organise them :wink:

Same goes for Shortcuts obviously…

There clearly is a better way to organize these: tags. Imagine opening the app to a screen that fits presents you with tags, representing the various contexts in which you use workflows/shortcuts: for photos, for travel, for calendar, for to-dos, for music, for home automation. (Perhaps with the option of selecting two for the “and” function.). The advantage over Launch Center Pro’s approach is that you could (in my fantasy world) easily add and remove the tags, without having to move tiles around.

:laughing: did you read my blog post above? Tagging was very much the basis for it.

I had the sense that you were angling more for smart searches in that (very nice!) blog post. The nice things about tags is that there are fewer steps involved. I’d love a way to toggle between a “flat list” view and a tags view. Let’s both keep our fingers crossed!

My view was that you would be able to categorise workflows by sets of criteria based on meta data held against the workflow. It could be a custom data item (egfectively a tag), the date it was last modified, a flag indicating it was downloaded from the gallery, the name of the author, a custom flag noting it as a favourite, etc.

Tagging was the original inspiration when I was struggling with organising them (after some cleaning up I’m actually back down below 600 workflows/ shortcuts now :zipper_mouth_face:), but when I thought about it some more I realised that even that could be constraining for the way I really wanted to be using it. Why not be able to search for Workflows I’ve worked on in the last month that use an Evernote action and are tagged with “Work” and “meeting” or “Work” and “agenda”?

This was Workflow (at the time I wrote it at least) and I figured the sky was the limit with the technical skills in that team so why not aim high? :wink:

It’s always a tradeoff: the UI needs to be constrained enough for casual users but not so constrained that it cramps the style of power users. I think Apple could hit the sweet spot by limiting the metadata used to tags. Power users can knock themselves out with multiple tags on items, as well as selecting various sets of “all” tags. In your case, tagging your Evernote shortcuts with “Evernote” and your agenda shortcuts with “agenda” gives one ways of finding each or both – without having to bother with multiple criteria. With a simple sort by function, you could also add date tags. No one needs to convince me of the desperate need for an iOS version of HoudahSpot, but I’d really hate to see feature-bloat on Shortcuts make it even more scary than it already is to casual users.