Automation is something fundamental in our day to day. The launch of Shortcuts by Apple a few years ago was a starting point for something that has continued to grow exponentially. The reality is that the advances that the application has been incorporating in the different operating systems means that there is a group of experts working on improving performance. Changes to Shortcuts have also arrived in iOS and iPadOS 14. However, some of the new features are not yet available in the developer betas, but will be integrated little by little until finally reaching the final version. These are the main new features of Shortcuts.
watchOS 7, real automations and folders in Shortcuts on iOS and iPadOS 14
Without further ado, let's get to know the main news and changes of Shortcuts in iOS 14. One of my favorite novelties is the addition of six new launchers. That is, six new situations that can trigger the activation of a certain shortcut. These are:
- Charger: When you connect or disconnect the charger, one action or another will start.
- Battery level: Starts an automation when the battery reaches a precise battery percentage.
- E-mail: when you receive an email that meets a series of criteria (subject, sender, account, etc.) an action will be triggered.
- Message: an action is started when you receive a message from a specific person.
- Close application: when an app is closed a shortcut will start.
In this way and with these new launchers, we are able to turn on battery saver mode automatically when our device reaches 30% battery, for example. Or turn off the lights when we exit a streaming application. With these triggers, Apple wants shortcuts to get smarter. However, for these to do so it is necessary for the user to configure them.
Another novelty around Shortcuts is the possibility to organize shortcuts in folders. Thus, we can keep all the shortcuts in order if we have many. In addition, it is integrated with another novelty that is the existence of a real Shortcuts widget. That is, we can create a folder with the most used shortcuts and add them to the home screen thanks to the iOS 14 widgets.
Finally, with iOS and iPadOS 14 we can add shortcuts directly to our watch thanks to the integration of the App with the Apple Watch. We can configure in each shortcut if we want it to appear or not in the clock application. We can also carry out the different shortcuts without having to be next to the iPhone since they are synchronized by iCloud.
