Shortcuts Watch App

Apologies if this has been raised elsewhere in the forum but is there any hope that we will see a Watch app for Shortcuts like we had for Workflow? I think Apple took a big step backwards when they dropped the Watch app.
Is there any alternative to Shortcuts that does work on the Apple Watch? The old app made it possible to select a Workflow from a list without invoking Siri (which is often inconvenient). It also made possible asking for input to a script. Moreover, some workflows were capable of running entirely on the Watch. Hard to believe that Apple came out with the Series 4 and eliminated one of the most useful Watch apps at the same time.

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There’s always hope, but no one apart from Apple will know for sure.

As for alternatives, nothing is going to give you that equivalence yet.

Right. And I was thinking about how much of a pity that was.

My answer is “not as great as it seems, but still substantial”. My experiments with NFC tags show me that works better - if you have the phone handy. But if you don’t then of course you want the watch.

Do any beta users have anything to add to this discussion? Any glimmer of a return of Shortcuts to the Watch (without Siri)?

No sign of a non-voice (Siri) native Shortcuts app for the watch.

Honestly, the Shortcuts team have been pretty busy with the OS integration aspects, so not surprising nothings appeared in this OS cycle.

Does anyone have a clue as to why Apple dropped Shortcuts-Watch functionality? Since I posted this 15 months ago there is no evidence that Apple will give the Apple Watch the capabilities that it had before workflow became shortcuts. I suppose the simple answer is that there is insufficient demand but I wondered if there was some other reason that was not apparent (to me).

There are lots of questions like this about why Apple have chosen to do something. Without getting someone in the know from within Apple to explain, it is just speculation. But some of the factors that immediately come to mind that might have influenced this are:

  • Certainly the Workflow implementation was plagued with issues, and it probably needed a lot of re-work to make it “Apple-standard”.
  • Apple did implement a cut down version of Shortcuts integration for the HomePod, which was a focus point for their home automation integration and such a relatively new product.
  • The Apple Watch has become a device that can operate independently of the iPhone, which is required to make Shortcuts work on the go so to speak. As a result, either a re-dependency has to be established, or a way to have a subset of Shortcuts (like for the Home Pod) available on the Apple Watch might be desired by Apple.
  • In the last two years Apple have delivered a lot on Shortcuts as it has become embedded into the OS and opened up even more to third party developers. Last year Apple also bit off significantly more than they could chew in terms of depth and amount of delivery. The amount of change in Shortcuts is not consummate with the amount of time and resource to work on it. Chances are it is on a whiteboard in Cupertino, but it hasn’t been high up compared to the other strategic things Apple wanted to achieve.