Scheduled Shortcuts and Location Triggers
One feature that the Shortcuts app desperately needs is the ability to run shortcuts in the background based on a certain time or location. Launch Center Pro recently released version 3.0 and one of its selling features is the ability to run shortcuts based on a certain time or location (listen to the discussion from Viticci on Connected). Not only does this feature require a subscription or a one-time in-app purchase but it can not run the shortcut natively in the background because they are limited by Apple’s API.
Personally, I’m hopeful that Apple will add this type of integration into the Shortcut app sooner rather than later so investing in an app such as Launch Center Pro seems premature and more work later. Additionally, there is actually a way to do something similar without an additional third-party app.
Enter the “Siri, remind me of this later” feature. I think many people forget about the Siri feature which allows you to say, “Siri, remind me of this…” and you can quickly return to whatever you were doing by tapping the icon. I use this method to “schedule” a shortcut. I realize that you still have to tap something but at this point its the fastest and most efficient way to run a shortcut at a certain time or when you arrive/leave a particular location.
For example, I send an email on the first of every month. I have a shortcut that helps me populate the email with the correct date and information and then sends it to the correct people. Using this method, a reminder will pop up on my phone at 9 am at the start of every month, I tap on the Shortcut icon in the reminder, and then it will take me right to the shortcut to run.
Additionally, in the Reminders app you can also set a reminder based on when you arrive or leave a location instead of a time-based reminder. Theoretically, if you wanted to run a shortcut every time you arrived at work you could easily do so.
The video below is just a minute long and shows the process.
Note: In the video, the audio cuts out when I use Siri. This seems to be a limitation of the screen recording feature on iOS but you can still see what I say because Siri types out the words.
[youtube ]