This video is sponsored by Shortform.
Intro Last year, I made a
video introducing the Shortcuts app on the iPhone, I’ll link to it in the description of this video,
I would recommend you watch that video first if you’re brand new to shortcuts, and then come back
to this video. I think the problem though is that actually building Shortcuts yourself can
be quite confusing. But, the Shortcuts app has something called the Shortcuts gallery,
which is full of super useful shortcuts that Apple themselves have designed. The
problem with that is that most people don’t have the time to browse through them all,
so I thought I’d do it for you, in a new series that I’m provisionally calling ‘Shortcut
Showcase’. Stick with me to the end of the video, because I’m going to be sharing 8 shortcuts that
you can get going with immediately, that will unleash the productivity power of your iPhone.
OK, let’s get into it.
Batch Add Reminders When you create a reminder
in the Reminders app, if you then tap on the ‘i’ or info button next to it,
you have the option to add Sub Tasks. So if the task was ‘pack for the weekend’ for example,
you might decide to add a load of sub tasks like clean tee shirts, toothbrush, deodorant,
camera, whatever you decide you’re taking with you. There’s a shortcut that makes
this process really easy, especially if you’re wanting to work with a list of text.
Open the Shortcuts app, head to the Gallery and search for
Batch Add Reminders. Tap add to add the shortcut to your Shortcuts app.
There’s a couple of ways that you can run this. The first is to simply open the Shortcuts app
and tap on the Shortcut. The first thing you’ll be asked to do is to give the Reminder itself a name,
so in this example that would be ‘pack for trip’, and then tap Done. Then on the next screen, you
can either type your list in, or copy and paste it in from elsewhere. When you’re finished, tap Done,
and while it looks like nothing has happened, if you then open the Reminders app, you’ll see
in the Reminders list, your reminder is there, complete with all of the subtasks you just added.
There’s another way that you can do this, and that’s directly from a list of text. So here
in this email for example, I’ve got a list of items that someone has sent over to me,
that I want to turn into a reminder. I’ll select the text first, then tap the right arrow until I
get to Share, which I’ll then tap on. I’ll then scroll down and choose Batch Add Reminders. Give
the reminder a name, and choose Always Allow if you’re prompted to. The shortcut will run,
creating a reminder consisting of all the text you just highlighted.
Search List on Google If you’ve got multiple
things that you want to search on Google at once, say you’re comparing things in a list,
I’ve put car models in for this example but you can use what you like,
there’s a nice little shortcut that will make this easy for you. Open Shortcuts,
go to the Gallery and search for ‘Search List on Google’. Add that shortcut to your Shortcuts app.
Tap on the shortcut to run it. You’re then going to either type the search terms in,
pressing return after each one, or copy and paste them from a list that you’ve
got stored in another app, it doesn’t matter how you do it, so long as they
end up going in like this. When you’re ready, tap Done. Your browser of choice will open,
displaying one of the searches, but if you’ve got Safari as your default browser like I have,
you just need to swipe left or right at the bottom of the screen to move between the search pages.
A really handy little tool if you’re in the process of researching multiple items at once,
and you want to quickly jump from a written list, to a set of Google searches.
Sponsor In a video about
Shortcuts it seems fitting that Shortform have very kindly agreed to sponsor today’s video.
Shortform is a service that takes non-fiction books and turns them into easy to digest book
summaries, saving you valuable time, whilst letting you learn more. I recently discovered
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advice I need quickly and get to putting the skills I’ve learnt into practice right away.
There’s new book guides and articles every week and as a subscriber, you even get to vote on
what books you’d like covered in the future, by Shortform’s team of experienced editors. It'll
come as no surprise to you guys, I’m a fan of the technology book guides in particular,
but they cover loads more, from business to finance, even entertainment. If you’re interested,
you can get a 5-day free trial as well as 20% off your membership by joining Shortform through
my link, which you can see here on screen, and you’ll find in the description of this video.
Read Body of Article Out Loud If you go to the Shortcuts app, and
then Gallery, and search for Read Body of Article Out Loud, you can add this handy little shortcut
to your phone. Now this particular shortcut is going to run from a Share Sheet, not from the
app. So what I’m going to do is navigate to an article in Safari, I’ve got this tech article up,
and then I’m going to tap on the Share button down at the bottom of the screen, and scroll down until
I see ‘Read Body of Article Out Loud’. Tap that button, and if you’re asked to grant permission,
make sure you allow all, otherwise this won’t work. Once that’s done, your phone will begin
reading out the body of the article in a pretty awful but very usable tone of voice.
Combine Screenshots & Share Let’s say that you’ve captured
a load of screenshots on your iPhone, and you now want to send those screenshots as
a single image to someone, rather than having to attach and send them one at
a time. Open the Shortcuts app, go to the Gallery, tap on Search,
and look for Combine Screenshots and Share. Add it to your Shortcuts app by tapping the plus button.
Now here’s how this one works. Rather than selecting screenshots directly from your photo
library, the shortcut is going to work backwards, and select however many screenshots you tell it
to select, starting from the most recent in your photo library. So here in this example,
I’ve got a few screenshots mixed in with some regular photos and also a video, but the way this
shortcut will work, is it will start with this screenshot here, and then combine it with however
many screenshots I tell it as it works backwards. So let’s tap to run the screenshot, and where it
says Number of Screenshots, I’m going to use the plus button to make this three. I’ll then choose
Done, and the screenshot will run, and create an image with the three screenshots sat side by side.
If you tap on where it says Image up at the top, your phone will show you the file type,
and give you quick access to saving this to your files or to your photo library, or printing,
and if you tap on the Share button, you’ve got the usual Share Sheet options relevant to
your device. You also have the same Share button down in the bottom left of the previous screen,
as well as a markup button, if you wish to mark the image up before sending it on.
PDF Shoutout By the way, if you
prefer to have content like this in a written format, there’s a PDF to accompany this video,
and you can access it by joining my membership programme, where for a small monthly fee,
you’ll get access to all video PDFs moving forward, plus the growing library of old
ones. Just follow the link in the description of this video that says ‘Become a Channel Member’.
Bulk Tag Notes You can tag notes
in the notes app, it makes it easier to search for them later on. The problem is,
the tagging function is a relatively new feature, and it’s possible that you, like me,
might have been using the Notes app for a long time. If that’s the case, going back through
and tagging old notes can be a real pain, and that’s where this shortcut comes in really handy.
Go to the Shortcuts app, head to the Gallery,
search for Bulk Tag Notes. Add it to your Shortcuts.
Then, when you’re ready, open the Shortcuts app and tap on the Shortcut. The way this works is
that you’ll set a criteria for what you want the shortcut to tag initially, and you do this
by inputting a word or phrase in the box that shows. When you tap Done, the shortcut will
come back with a list of notes that you can tag. They’ll all be selected by default, tap to uncheck
any that you don’t want to be included in the bulk tagging. When you’re happy with your list,
choose Done. Then in the box that shows up on the next screen, input the tag that you’d like to
insert. You don’t need to include a hashtag icon, just the word will do. Tap Done, and the process
will run in the background. When finished, if you head into Notes and call up one of the Notes that
you ran the process on, you can see that your tag has been added down at the bottom of the note.
Now so far, I’ve done this with relatively small quantities of notes, you can of course do it with
as many as you like, just keep in mind that if you’re doing this with huge quantities,
the process may take longer for you than it did for me in this video,
but this is a really quick way of getting your notes tagged in no time.
Convert Burst to GIF Burst photography is one of
those iPhone features that I think a lot of people forget exists. Basically, when in the Camera app,
if you tap and hold the shutter button and in a quick motion, swipe to the left and
continue to hold, your camera will take burst photography, the same as you see paparazzi and
nature photographers doing with their high-end cameras. The end result is a burst of photos,
and you can see it’s a burst because when you view the photo after, you’ve got the word Burst,
and the number of photos up at the top left. Down at the bottom it says Select,
and you can use that to work through your photos and pick out the ones that you want to keep.
But here’s another thing you can do with your burst photos. Open the Shortcuts app,
go to the Gallery and search for Convert Burst to Gif. Tap to add it to your shortcuts. Then in
the Shortcuts tab, tap on the shortcut itself to run it. Your phone will display only the
Bursts from your photo library. Choose the one that you’d like to run this shortcut on. Your
phone will then display the Gif that it’s just created. Tap Done, and you’ll then get a prompt
asking you what you’d like to do with it, you can either save it to your camera roll, or share it.
Zip and Email I mentioned in a recent video,
how you could use the Files app as a kind of hack for zipping photos that you could
then send on to someone. Well if you’re sending by email which you most likely are,
there’s an even easier way, and that’s to use this Shortcut.
Head to the Shortcuts app, go to Gallery, search for Zip and Email. Add it to your shortcuts app.
The way that this particular shortcut runs is via the Share Sheet, which actually makes this one
even easier to run. So with the shortcut added, what we can now do is head to the Photo library,
and select a few photos. I’ll then tap the Share button down in the bottom left of the screen,
then scroll down and choose Zip and Email. In a flash, the app will zip the files for you,
and then add them into an email, ready for you to add some text to and hit send.
What’s also good about this shortcut, is that it also works in the Files app, not just the Photos
app. So you can also use this to zip a bunch of PDFs together, or spreadsheets, or whatever
you might be working on in the files app, and then email them out. In fact I even got this to
work in Dropbox, so you should be able to make use of this, no matter what files app you use.
Turn Text into Audio If you have large passages
of text that you’d prefer to have read to you rather than having to read it,
perhaps an article or a document that you’ve been sent, and you want to listen to it in the car or
while you’re on the treadmill maybe, there’s a shortcut that will allow you to turn any text into
spoken audio. The audio quality isn’t amazing, but it’s usable, so here’s how you’d do it.
Head to the Shortcuts app, go to the Gallery and then search for
Turn Text into Audio. Tap the plus to add it to your Shortcuts app.
This one works very simply - you’re going to find the passage of text that you want to use,
select it and then copy it to your clipboard. Then go to the Shortcuts app, and run the shortcut. Tap
and choose paste to paste the text into the box here, and then choose Done. The audio file has
been created, and if you tap the Share button in the bottom left, I’d then recommend that you save
this audio file to your Files app by choosing Save to Files. You can then come back to it
later on by accessing it in the Files app, and of course you can play the audio when you’re ready.
But here’s a really cool method for using this. Let’s say you’ve got a magazine article,
as in an actual written article, and you’d like to turn that into spoken audio. Run the shortcut,
like we did before, and then tap into the text box, but with nothing on your clipboard. You
won’t get the Paste option, but you will get an option to scan text in. Hold your phone
until you’ve got the text lined up, and when it shows in the box, tap Insert. Your phone will
use Live Text to insert the text, and you can then create an audio file like we did before,
although I believe you do need an iPhone XS or newer for this particular hack to work.
End So there you go,
the first Shortcut Showcase, with 8 awesome shortcuts that you can start
using on your iPhone right away. What do you think, which was your favourite? Drop
me a comment and let me know, while I get to work finding 8 more for a future video.
Oh and if you were playing a drinking game where you take a shot each time I say the word shortcut,
like someone suggested in a comment in the previous video, I really hope you’re ok…
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.