Using a Dictionary to Create a Menu in Shortcuts - With Toolbox Pro

Toolbox Pro
1

This time I’m looking at making the menu with a dictionary. Also show how to use emoji as icons.
Another way of making pretty menus in Shortcuts.

2

i was doing this, too, but I experienced high differences in the execution time of the ToolBox Pro Menus against the native choose from List action. Especially when the dictionary gets bigger and bigger. This lead me to just create a teext based list (with emojis as prefix-indicators) in the loop and use the native action because its way faster in often used shortcuts.

3

I’ve just tested time it takes for menus to pop up with the standard way and the Toolbox Pro way. There’s not much in it really.

Thinking about menus after this experimentation and seeing as we can add emojis in to the Shortcuts menus easily, why bother doing the more difficult way.
The only reason really will be if you have to have the icons from the icon generator and need specific colours. Or if you need a Subtitle.

I expect I will stay with the standard Shortcuts Menu actions. No need to make the job more difficult just for the sake of it…

4

Just figured out that if you save the ToolBoxPro menu contact files as a list of files in Data Jar. Then get the value to that list in your shortcut and then Choose From List, it brings up the menu with the icons Instantaneously with out having to use Repeat With Each action.

5

nice “workaround” great Idea!

6

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/33172256bd404d37856483f4ef585052

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/46f77909b01f4b8abf70abc88c417ff0

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e02c530ac6e746788727f69f8d6a79a8

Here are the two Shortcuts I use to make a list of Toolbox Pro icon menu files in DataJar.
The last Shortcut is an example of how to run the menus in your Shortcut.

2 Likes
7

Thanks for the inspiration @Leddy.
I extended // combined your shortcuts to create the menu completely within one shorcut. No need to type the name of the menu x times.
You can preview the menu during the creation and if you dont like it - directly delete it again.
I think its useful to create all the menu lists inside a “shortcutMenu” dictionary in DataJar.
In your shared shortcut “DataJar Icon Menu” is a small bug, you did not change the type for the value to “Contact” in the Choose from list step.

Here is my version of the shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/bbecd4514fc64c4c948740c82d4fec8c
I also postet about this on twitter here

1 Like
8

@FlohGro the link to your shortcut does not work.

9

Edited - weird somehow the link broke…

10

Nice update. Yes you have to change to Contact in the Choose action. But you must leave it as a file when you save it to Data Jar. Weird but true.