Warren Web: Shortcuts

A shortcut is a quick way to get one or more tasks done with your apps. The Shortcuts apps lets you create your own shortcut with multiple steps. These workflows can automate common sequences of actions with multiple apps.

For example, with Actions for Obsidian, you can run a Daily Startup shortcut automatically at 6 AM every day that creates your Daily Note using a template in Obsidian. It can even include weather conditions and forecast, upcoming calendar events, and tasks to do today from OmniFocus or Things.

Key Features

It’s useful to understand the different features that Shortcuts offer.

First, there are many ways to run shortcuts.

Apps
Actions
Widgets
Home Screen
Lock Screen
Action Button
Watch

Shortcuts offer multiple interfaces and data types.

URL Schemes
Web APIs
Input Types
Dictionaries (JSON)

Finally, macOS and iOS provide various system-level technologies that enable you to trigger your shortcuts.

Share Sheet
Quick Actions
Services
Menu Bar
Dock

Actions

macOS or iOS apps can provide specific functionality via Shortcut actions. There are many apps that offer Shortcut actions.

See Apps for examples.

URL Scheme

URL schemes can be used anywhere a URL can be used — in a web browser, shell script, command line, or in another app (SwiftUI or Node/JavaScript).

The Shortcuts app supports a URL scheme (shortcuts://run-shortcut) that allows you to execute any shortcut from a URL with optional input from clipboard contents or a text string. This extends shortcut automation to other apps.

For example, I can use this URL scheme in a note for a task manager like OmniFocus to run a shortcut as one step in a project or action list.

Tip: If you’d like to run one shortcut from another shortcut, use the Run Shortcut action instead of a URL scheme. You should only run shortcuts with a URL if you’re integrating from another app outside of Shortcuts.

Shortcuts also has the ability to integrate other apps via their URL schemes.

If you want to use an app that has URL schemes but isn’t currently supported with a built-in Shortcut actions, you can construct the URLs manually using the URL action and launch them using the Open URLs action or Open X-Callback URL action.

See URL Schemes for more details.