This app adds nearly 150 features to Apple Shortcuts, allowing you to automate just about anything on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Apple Shortcuts is a powerful automation tool, but the limited number of native actions can be frustrating. It’s easy to get stuck trying to set up an automation and realizing that certain actions are simply not possible. The free application Actions aims to help you do more by adding a whopping 141 actions, many of which Apple should have included from the start.
This App Adds Nearly 150 Features to Apple Shortcuts
I could spend the rest of this article simply listing the different features, but I’ll spare you that long list by simply saying there are a lot of them. Among the most notable tools are those that allow unit conversions, a number of system integrations to check specific things like a particular device connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and several functions for working with images and lists. This app works on both Apple’s mobile devices, iPhone and iPad, as well as on Macs. Some actions are only available on one or the other category, but the majority are offered on both.
To get started, simply install the application and create a new shortcut. The best way to get an idea of the new capabilities is to go to Shortcuts, create a new shortcut, and search for actions by app. You will find all of them under Shortcuts.
I had a good time doing this. The first automation I created was to turn any highlighted text into an image with a randomly selected wallpaper from Unsplash. Not very useful in daily life, but very easy to set up, with very intuitive actions and very natural sequences to define.
Automate Anything on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
And this is just the beginning when it comes to images. For example, you can get the average color or the dominant color of an image, which could be very useful for automating the choice of a font color. You can also blur an image.
There are also many useful tools for automating URLs. For instance, you can get the title of any web page if you have the URL. I used this to design a plugin that quickly retrieves the name of the latest article published on BeGeek and generates a fully formatted markdown link with the title.
There is much more to discover and do. There are specific actions for devices, such as checking which Bluetooth devices are connected, which apps are currently open, and if cellular data is enabled. The best way to find out what you can do, much like with the official Shortcuts app, is to dive in and try it out.