I can now go and stick this NFC tag on the lid of our dog’s dog food box. Then each
time her dog food is getting low, all I need to do is tap the NFC tag with my
phone and a reminder will be added to our shopping list for us to buy her dog food,
complete with an image and a clickable link. Clever right?
### Intro
A little while back, I made a video about the Automations side of the Shortcuts app
on the iPhone, where I said I thought it was the iPhone’s best kept secret. Well, in this video,
I’m bringing you 6 more, including 2 that make use of inexpensive NFC tags that you can pick up for
literally a few cents each, to help you create game-changing automations around your home. If
the idea of being able to simply tap your iPhone against something in your house and have it add
an item to your shopping list sounds interesting to you, keep watching until the end of the video.
We’re going to be using the Shortcuts app throughout this video,
it’s a free download from the App Store, and if you’ve never used it,
I’ve made a video all about it, and I’ll link to it in the description of this video.
OK, let’s get into it.
### Set VPN via App
If you use a VPN, you’ll understand the valuable service that they can provide. You can automate
the toggling on and off of your VPN, based on a number of different criteria. Let’s say for
example, that you want to toggle your VPN to switch on when you open a specific app,
one that you always use with a VPN for example, and you then want it to toggle
off when you close that app. We can easily do that using an Automation.
Open Shortcuts, choose Automation at the bottom of the screen, and choose Create
Personal Automation. Scroll down, and choose App from this list. On this next screen,
where it says ‘Choose’, we’re going to tap into there and select an app from
the list. I’m going to choose Netflix for this example, you could of course
choose whatever app you like. Choose Done when you’ve selected your app.
Then back on this previous screen, you can see at the bottom we have
the option to choose whether our preferred action should happen
when the app is opened or closed. In this instance, we want to choose ‘Is Opened’.
Choose Next when you're ready.
On this next screen, we need to choose our VPN action. The easiest way to do this is to
tap into the search bar at the bottom of the screen and search for ‘Set VPN’. You can see
that the default action is that our automation will connect to our VPN, which is what we want
on this occasion. Tap into the greyed out VPN option. Choose your VPN from the list. If you
have multiple VPN profiles on your device, they should all show here. Choose Next to continue.
Disable ask before running because once again we don't want our phone to
prompt us to run this automation, we just want it to do it automatically.
Choose Done when you're finished, and your automation is created. We can test
it by opening Netflix and you'll notice that our VPN has connected.
So we're halfway there, we have an automation that will automatically
enable our VPN each time that we open Netflix. We now want to create
an automation to run alongside this one that will disconnect from our VPN each
time that we close Netflix. To do this, we repeat the steps that we just took.
But this time, when we get to the actions page, we tap on Connect and change this to
Disconnect. Everything else from this point on is exactly the same as it was last time.
And you can see that when we're finished, we have two automations; one for when Netflix is
closed and one for when Netflix is opened. We can see that they work by opening the Netflix
app and noticing the VPN connect, then closing the Netflix app and seeing the VPN disconnect.
### PIA Integration
Speaking of Automations, Private Internet Access, who are very kindly sponsoring today's video have
got a brilliant automation built right into their VPN app. From the main menu,
you would choose Settings, then Automation and Enable Automation. Then tap to Manage Automation
and you can choose how and when you'd like your VPN to automatically connect. For example,
I've got mine set to always connect when on open Wi-Fi, which is a good idea, because connecting
to the Internet on a public Wi-Fi network, the kind that you find at airports and coffee shops,
without using a VPN, puts your data at risk of being stolen. With the PIA smartphone app,
I don't have to worry about it, the connection just happens automatically.
But that's not the only reason why I continually recommend Private Internet Access as my VPN
of choice here on the channel. They have a no-log policy that they’ve defended in court,
which means that they don’t store any browsing data about you. It’s awesome if you’re trying
to get some work done on the go, but it’s also great if you stream a lot of content,
as you can change your IP address to one of 84 different countries, as well as all 50 US states.
Plus your one subscription can now be used for your entire household on all of your devices,
so if you’re like me and you’ve got multiple phones, tablets and computers, you don’t need
to worry about running out of licenses. Sign up through the link in the description of this video,
to get 83% off, plus 4 months for free, so it ends up at only a couple of dollars a month,
and thanks again to Private Internet Access for sponsoring this video.
### Stop your Alarm using your voice
Here’s a great automation for people who really resent having to get out of bed to
switch their iPhone alarm off. Your iPhone has an Accessibility feature called Voice Control which
allows you to control a number of your iPhones main features using your voice. The problem is,
quite often you won't want voice control to be enabled, but in that specific moment when your
alarm is going off you will. We can create an automation where each time your alarm goes off,
your phone will automatically enable voice control allowing
you to tell your alarm to stop. We can even automate it so that voice control
is toggled off immediately after your alarm is silenced, setting your phone back to normal.
To do this, create a personal automation, the way that we've been doing so far in this video. On
the new automation screen, choose Alarm. On this next page choose Goes Off. In other words, we want
this particular action to run each time our alarm goes off. You can see at the bottom of the screen,
you have the option of choosing to enable this on any alarms or just your wake up alarm,
or just your existing alarms. I'm going to leave this as Any, but you could of course
choose whatever is suitable for you. Choose Next, and on the next screen in the search bar,
search for Voice Control. Choose Set Voice Control. You can see that the default is for
voice control to be enabled and this is what we want. Choose Next, and like we've done
elsewhere in this video, disable ask before running. Choose Done to save your automation.
Note that if you're using voice control for the first time, your phone may need to download
some files. If you’re prompted to allow this to happen, make sure that you do it, and depending
on how quick your Internet is, you may need to wait a few minutes for those files to download.
Once that's happened, we can then create a second automation to set Voice Control off
when your alarm is stopped. So we repeat the steps that we just took a moment ago,
but on the new automation screen, make sure we choose ‘is stopped’. The rest
of this automation is identical to the one that we just created.
With that done, we have two automations, one for when the alarm goes off and another
for when the alarm is stopped. Note that the command that you want to say when your alarm
goes off is “tap stop”. That's because you're telling your iPhone to tap the stop button
that will appear on screen. You could also say “tap snooze” to tap the snooze button.
### PDF Shoutout
By the way, there is an accompanying PDF for this video,
with full step by step guide including screenshots, and you can access it,
along with all PDFs moving forward, and the growing library of old ones,
for just $5 a month. Click the link in the description of this video that says ‘get the PDF’.
### Silence Unknown Callers
Your iPhone has a feature called Focus Modes and using that feature, you can set a focus mode for
work and a focus mode for personal time for example. It's a really good feature, but it
can sometimes be a bit overcomplicated for what some people might want to achieve. For example,
let's say that you wanted to silence calls from unknown callers outside of your working day,
but you wanted to allow them during normal office hours. Focus Mode makes this a little
bit complicated to achieve but there is an automation that you can use instead.
To do this, open the Shortcuts app, tap on Automation down at the bottom and then choose
Create Personal Automation. On this next screen, choose time of day. We're going to
specify a time of the day to toggle Silence Unknown Callers on. So for this example,
I'm going to choose 6 pm. In the repeat section, I'm going to leave this as daily
because I want this function to toggle on every single day. Choose Next to continue.
On this next screen, we need to choose the action that we’d like to happen at 6pm each
day. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to tap into the search bar at the bottom of the
screen and type in the word ‘silence’. Choose Set Silence Unknown Callers. And you can see that the
shortcut is going to set silence unknown callers to on, every day at 6 pm. Choose next to continue.
On this next screen, toggle Ask Before Running off. With this toggled on,
your iPhone would prompt you to allow it to set the Silence Unknown Callers feature,
and we want this to happen automatically. Choose Done to create the automation.
So now at 6 pm every day, our iPhone will toggle on the Silence Unknown Callers function.
We now need to create a second automation to toggle this function off at the start
of our working day. Tap the plus button in the upper right corner, and choose Create Personal
Automation. We're going to repeat the steps that we used in the previous automation. The
only difference is that we’ll change the time of day for this automation to run,
and we're going to toggle Silence Unknown Callers off. I'll choose 8am as my time of day. But what
I'm also going to do is under the repeat section, change this from daily to weekly. I'm going to
choose Monday to Friday but leave Saturday and Sunday disabled. This is because I only want
this automation to run on Monday to Friday. I want Silence Unknown Callers to be enabled over
the weekend. I'll choose Next on this screen, and search for the Silence Unknown Callers function,
like we did before. Where it says On, I'll toggle this to off. And again, I'm going to
disable the Ask Before Running option. Choose Done to save the automation and you can see
that we now have two separate automations that will work separately and cancel each other out.
### Play a Playlist when you get in the car
If you'd like your car to automatically play a specific playlist, every time that you get
in the car and connect to CarPlay, you can create an easy Automation to
do just that. This does work best on Apple Music because of its deep integration with
automations. I did try doing this with Spotify and wasn't able to make it work.
Create a new Personal Automation, the exact way that we've done all throughout this video.
On the New Automation page, choose CarPlay. You can see that your phone will default to
When CarPlay connects, which is what we want. Tap the Next button to continue. For this particular
automation, the function that we want is already showing on this page - Play Music. Tap into that
option, and where you can see music greyed out, tap into there. You'll need to navigate through
the music app to find the music that you'd like to play. This could be an album or a playlist
or a radio station. It really doesn't matter, but in this instance, I'm going to choose a playlist.
Tap the plus button at the top to select this particular playlist. Disable Ask Before Running,
and when you choose Done, the Automation is created. While this automation is enabled,
every time that your phone connects to CarPlay, your chosen music will begin to play.
### The Proper Weekly
By the way, if you’re enjoying the content here, why not consider signing up to my newsletter,
the proper weekly. I include some tech news from the week, a behind the scenes of what’s happening
here on the channel, as well as a tip for an item in the Apple ecosystem. The newsletter goes out
each Friday, it’s free to join, and I’ll include a signup link in the description of this video.
### NFC Tag Automations
These last two Automations are in my opinion, really interesting. We’re going to create a couple
of of Automations around the use of an NFC tag. An NFC tag is a small chip that can store a small
amount of data, such as a website address, phone number, or even a coupon. When an NFC-enabled
device, such as your iPhone, is brought near an NFC tag, the data on the tag is automatically
read. We can create Automations using the Shortcuts app, so in other words, each time your
phone taps against one of these, an automation is run. Or, we can use a free third-party app to
write data to an NFC tag, that will then work any time anyone taps their phone against it.
And don’t worry about this being expensive, I’ve got this box of 50 tags,
I bought this from Amazon for about $10, they’re really inexpensive,
and these ones are even sticky on one side, so you can discreetly stick them somewhere.
Let’s explore a couple of options for how we could use them.
### Idea 1 - Add an item to your Shopping List
So one of the things that we can do, is we can create a shortcut to add a specific item to
our shopping list in our Reminders app. We can then link that shortcut to an NFC tag that we
can place by that physical item. So the example that I would use is the box where my wife and I
store our dog’s dog food. She has a very specific type of dog food that we have to order online,
and so I can create a Reminder that not only adds dog-food to my shopping list,
but also includes a link to the exact product that we purchase. And even better,
I can make it so that all I have to do is tap my phone on the lid of the dog food
container when it’s running low for this to happen, no human intervention required.
This is a two-step process. Well, technically it's a three-step process. The first thing that
you need to do is make sure that you've got a shopping list in your Reminders app. If you don't
have that, you would simply open the Reminders app, choose add list and call the list shopping.
With that done, we can create the shortcut that's going to add this particular item to our shopping
list. Open the Shortcuts app and tap on shortcuts at the bottom left. Tap the Plus in the upper
right hand corner to create a new shortcut. Tap on Add Action, then tap on Apps and choose Reminders
from the list. Within this sub menu, we're going to choose Add New Reminder. Where the
word reminder is greyed out, tap into there. I'm going to input “dog food” because that's what's
relevant for what I'm trying to achieve. You can see that my list has defaulted to shopping,
which is what I want but if this was something else, you would need to change your list to
shopping. I'm going to leave the remainder of this page as-is but I will tap into the URL field and
input the Web Address for the product that we buy. That way when the Reminder is added to my
shopping list, there is a clickable link that will take me right to the page where I need to
purchase it from. Choose Done to create the Shortcut. With the shortcut created tap and
hold on it for a moment and choose Rename. I'm going to call the shortcut “dog food shopping”.
Let's test the shortcut and just make sure it works before we proceed. To show this, let’s first
check that my Shopping List in Reminders is empty, you can see that it is. I'm then going to tap on
the shortcut here in the Shortcuts app, then go to my Reminders app and you can see in my shopping
list, the item has been successfully added. It even shows an image of the dog food which is
great. So we're halfway there. We now just want to attach this particular Shortcut to an NFC tag.
To do this, open the shortcut app and tap on Automation. Choose Create Personal Automation,
then scroll down and choose NFC. Take one of your NFC tags and
tap the scan button. Tap your phone against the NFC tag to register it.
I find that this works best by using the top part of your iPhone. Give the tag a name. On
the Actions page tap into the search box at the bottom and choose Run Shortcut.
Tap in to where it says shortcut and choose the “dog food shopping” shortcut that we just created.
Also, tap back into the search field and search for ‘vibrate’. Without this, you’ll have no
idea if the interaction with the tag has been successful or not. Choosing vibrate means that,
when the Shortcut has been run, your phone will vibrate, so you’ll know it’s worked. Choose Next
when you're ready and disable Ask Before Running. Choose Done and your automation is created.
I can now go and stick this NFC tag on the lid of our dog’s dog food box.
Then each time her dog food is getting low, all I need to do is tap the NFC tag with my
phone and a reminder will be added to our shopping list for us to buy her dog food,
complete with an image and a clickable link. Clever right?
### Idea 2 - Share a file
Another thing that you could do with this is place an NFC somewhere in your home,
and every time someone taps on that particular tag, they'll be redirected to a website. There
are of course lots of uses for this, but an obviously use that I can think of is
if you have an Airbnb for example, you might have an information booklet that you'd like
to share with people as a PDF rather than having to print it out. You could stick a
couple of these tags around the house and link them to a PDF file that you store in
your Google Drive or your dropbox and you can update it as and when you need to, knowing
that anyone will be able to access it on their phone, without you having to print it all out.
For this to work, you do need to download a free app from the App Store. The app that I'm
using is called NFC Tools. You don't have to use this app but it's the one that I'm
using for this example, you just need an app that can write data to NFC tags.
With the app downloaded, open the app and choose Write. On this next screen, choose URL/URI. In
the text box here, you'll need to input the URL that you’d like to navigate people to,
in other words, where your PDF file is stored. Mine is in Google Drive, and I've copied mine
to my clipboard so that I can simply paste it in. Choose okay to move to the next screen,
and on this page, choose Write. You can see the size of the amount of data that
you're going to be passing across here as well, it really is a tiny amount of data.
Take a new NFC tag and when prompted, tap your phone against it.
That's it, you've written the data to the NFC tag and can now go ahead and stick this wherever
you like. I'll now take a different phone and you can see that when I approach the tag, I'm giving
a prompt to open a Safari link. Tapping on that prompt will open the PDF that we just linked to.
### End
So there you go, that's six more automations that you can create on your iPhone, including two that
involve NFC tags. What do you think? Would you be interested in me creating a follow-up video
where we explore more options of what you can do with NFC tags? Drop me a comment and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving
me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.