A couple of years ago with the release of iOS 13, Apple announced their brand new Shortcuts application. It wasn't until the last couple of months that I decided to configure some shortcuts on my device and they have been SUPER helpful. My experience so far has been great.
A big thing with me and technology is automating a process that I do repeatedly. If I'm going to do the same thing over and over again, I would love to create a process that just happens all the time so that I don't have to worry about it. Here are a few of the things that I was able to do on my device.
Disclaimer: This isn't an in-depth tutorial on how to set these things up, but I will attach screenshots of the settings. This is meant to just give you some ideas on things you can enable yourself on your device.
Automatic Low Power Mode
The first Shortcut that I have is that it automatically runs Low Power Mode. For this one, I have when battery level falls below 30% percent level, it will automatically turn on Low Power Mode. I do have this notifying me as well so that I am aware that it did just turn on Low Power Mode besides the battery icon changing its icon. This is useful so that when I'm out and about doing things, it will automatically start saving the battery so that my device will not die as quickly.
So, you may have guessed, if I have it turning on Low Power Mode automatically, do I have it turned off automatically? Yes & no. I do have the shortcut configured that once the battery reaches over 70%, it will turn off Low Power Mode. Most times, I do end up turning off Low Power Mode on my own though. I don't have this notifying me however like the previous shortcut because this will run if Low Power Mode is off or on. So that means that if I put it on the charger at 50%, once it reaches the threshold to turn off Low Power Mode, it will run the shortcut and notify me, even if I never had Low Power Mode on.
Watch Face Changes
The next Shortcut I use routinely is changing my watch face automatically for work and then back to my normal watch face. I have this specific watch face that has my Outlook Calendar on it and lets me know if meetings are coming up or are scheduled for today. So during the weekday (Monday - Friday) at 7:00 AM, it will set my watch face to the work-based one. I do have another one that odes set it back to my normal one at 4:00 PM since I don't need to see my Outlook Calendar at that point.
Automatic Wallpaper Changer
So for this last Shortcut, the idea didn't necessarily come from me. This idea came from a post I saw on Apple Insider (will link tutorial below). For the gist of this last shortcut, it goes out and grabs a wallpaper from a popular wallpaper website, Unsplash, and sets that as my home screen wallpaper.
As you can see in the screenshot, in the spot where the URL is being defined, I have it looking for landscape images. Every time it goes to that URL, a new picture is presented. You can change that word to any other category that you can think of and it will search Unsplash's collection of photos. I have this running in the morning and at the end of a workday so that I am presented with a new wallpaper twice a day for my home screen.
This is just the beginning of the powerful things that you can do with Shortcuts and with Automations in Shortcuts. My suggestion is that anything that you realize you are repeatedly doing every day, try to see if there is a way that you can automate it on your device. If you can automate it, then it might be something that you can implement here.
Feel free to comment if you have any other Shortcut ideas or things that you have implemented yourself!
Apple Insider Wallpaper Article - https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/23/how-to-use-shortcuts-to-automatically-change-your-iphone-wallpaper-every-day
