Some useful custom shortcuts that will make your iPhone more capable
Tons of Apple’s built apps are available for the iPhone that improve your user experience. If we want to talk about an app that will make your iPhone use easier and save a lot of time to do any complex stuff on your iPhone, then the Shortcut app is the most useful app to improve your iPhone use experience. Apple’s own Shortcuts app is well-organized like any other Apple app. Interestingly, many iPhone users do not know the exact potentiality of this shortcut app. But if you once started to use the iPhone’s shortcuts app, you will stick with it.
Apple Shortcut app is designed to perform multiple tasks in a single Tap. You can create a powerful automated workflow using Apple’s shortcut app. With this shortcut app, Apple changed the way of performing multiple tasks at a single time. Besides, it reduces the possibility of downloading many 3rd party apps from the store as inside the shortcut’s app, there are plenty of shortcuts available that will provide you the same features of an app. For example, To make the GIF from the photos, we have two options on our hands generally. One is to use the online tool and another one is to use the app that is developed for making GIFs from the photos. But if you use the shortcuts app, you do not have to use any of them, as there are shortcuts present in the shortcut app that will help you to make the GIF from the photos using one click. Not only that, there are plenty of shortcuts available in the Apple shortcut app.
One of the best parts of Apple’s shortcut app is that there are already pre-built shortcuts present inside the app that is developed by Apple. Besides, if you want you can create your shortcut based on your needs. The main thing that makes the shortcut app superior is that Apple makes it available for the developer to build their custom shortcut and share the custom shortcut so that every other user can use the shortcuts. There are plenty of websites present where developer publish their custom build shortcut and users can download the shortcuts on their phone and use them.
In this article, we will explore the top 10 best shortcuts that will help you to perform multiple tasks within a single click or perform complex tasks easily.
To add the below-mentioned custom shortcut to your shortcuts app, you have to click on the link>Add Shortcut. Then the Shortcut will be added to your shortcuts app. Now, if you want you can use the individual Shortcut from the shortcuts app or can set the individual Shortcut on the Home Screen like an App Icon by clicking on three dots> Share Button>Add to Home Screen to access it quickly.
The photo converter shortcut is a great tool to convert any photos from one format to another format. With the release of iOS 11, Apple introduced the HEIC/HEIF file format that is space-efficient and maintains the quality of the images. But we have to convert the format of this photo type as this file format is only supported for Apple devices and when we want to use those images on certain websites and applications we need to convert the file type. The photo converter shortcut will help you convert the photos to any extension. This shortcut supports converting to JPEG, HEIF, and PNG. You have to add the shortcut to the shortcuts app or on the Home screen and then Tap on the shortcut> Select the Photos that you want to convert> Select the final format that you want. The shortcut will automatically do all the stuff for you.
Remove background from Photo Shortcut
Sometimes we have to remove the background of the photos to add another background or to use the images in such a place where background removal is needed. You do not have to use any 3rd party app or online tool to do this. The Remove Background from Photos will allow you to remove the background from photos. The interesting fact about this shortcut is that you can use this shortcut for portrait photos and remove the background of objects of other products. Though there is another option called visual look-up in the photos to remove the background, this shortcut is easy to use and handy.
Intelligent Power Shortcut
Intelligent power is a great shortcut if you want to keep your iPhone battery alive for a longer period than the regular time. By default, Apple gives us the option to enable the low power mode anytime or automatically turned on when the battery level reaches lower than 20%, but it only turns off the background activities and does not give so much option to customize based on our needs.
Intelligent power shortcuts allow you to conserve your battery by enabling a fantastic mode called” Ultra Low Power Mode”. Once you enable this shortcut, it will activate the low-power mode automatically when the battery level is less than 25%. And activate the ultra-low power mode when the battery level is less than 5%. When ultra-low power mode is activated, you can only make the call and cannot use the internet. The brightness of the iPhone will be turned down to zero and the Bluetooth, wi-fi, and mobile data will be automatically off.
The best thing about this shortcut is that you can customize the battery level based on your needs.
Water Eject Shortcut
All of the latest models of iPhone are water-resistant but they are not water-proof. If you suddenly drop your iPhone into the water, then you have to dry your iPhone speaker and this shortcut will help you in that case.
When you activate the shortcut, the volume sidebar will appear on the left side of the iPhone and the volume will be at 100% level along with vibrating your iPhone. This will take time for almost 20 seconds and during this time, you will notice that the water ejecting from your iPhone speaker.
This is one of the safest ways to dry your iPhone speaker as you do not have to insert anything inside the iPhone speaker.
Charging Time Shortcut
The charging time shortcut will provide you with the estimated charging time to make your iPhone fully charged.
Suppose, you have a 55% change on your iPhone and you have to go to the office after some time. Now, if you want to know the exact time to fully charge your iPhone then you can run this shortcut, and the shortcut will display the battery level of your iPhone and provide the estimated time to fully charge your iPhone.
The use case of this shortcut is that you can plug in your iPhone to the charger by estimating the time.
Search On Shortcut
Search On shortcut takes the searching on the iPhone to the next level. By default, you can search using the spotlight or from any browser to get the results from the internet. While you search using the browser, you can set the search engine and the results that will be shown after searching based on that specific search engine.
Now, when you run the Search On shortcut, it will show you a field where you have to provide the text or phrase that you want to search. Once, you do that, it will allow you to choose the search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, or Bing by which you want to search and it will provide you the results based on your selected search engine.
The best thing about this shortcut is that you can also search for social media platforms like YouTube or Reddit by typing the keyword or phrase. Besides, you also get the hashtag result from Instagram if you want.
Convert Photos to GIF Shortcut
Sometimes we have to create GIFs from the photos for various reasons. You can set the GIF as a profile picture in Discord or post something on social media using the GIF for better engagement based on your content.
Now, we have to either use the app or any online tool to make the photos to GIF. But using this shortcut, you can make GIFs from the photos easily without the need for any app or online tool. To do that, you have to Tap on the shortcut, select the photos, and then click on Done. Once you click on Done, the GIF from the selected photos will be created. But now, you have to save the GIF by clicking on the share icon and then Save Images to save the GIF to the photos app.
SiriGPT Shortcut
Along with the simple shortcut, some developers develop complex shortcuts that are possible to implement. One of the best usable shortcuts is the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT with the Siri voice assistant.
Siri voice assistant is a virtual assistant that Apple uses on their device. It’s smart enough to provide the information but not like its competitor Google Assistant. But the integration of the ChatGPT in the shortcut and then integrating the shortcut with Siri is a great way to get the best out of Siri. Before starting to use the SiriGPT shortcut, you have to open an openAI account with free credit or enough paid-for API tokens to cover your request.
To set the SiriGPT shortcut, you have to do the following steps:
- Log in to OpenAI and find your API keys
- Copy and paste the API keys somewhere.
- Download the SiriGPT shortcut
- Open the shortcuts by clicking on the three dots to edit the shortcut.
- When you open the shortcut to edit, you will find a file with the text “Add API key” and there you have to paste the key that you have copied previously.
- You have to permit it to use your iOS device’s voice recognition and for the shortcut to connect to the OpenAI’s API.
- Now you can add the shortcut as an icon on the home screen or set the voice command to integrate with Siri so that you can run this shortcut using the voice command or set this shortcut to run when you back tap open your iPhone that supports the back tap features.
EXIF Photo Details Shortcut
The full meaning of EXIF is Exchangeable Image File Format. It is the standard way to store the metadata in digital image files. It holds a lot of information about the images such as how the image was created, when the image was taken, which camera lens was used to capture the image and what was the settings while shooting the images. Now, there are plenty of tools available online to see the EXIF data and even you can get some data from the details section of any individual photo.
But this shortcut will allow you to see the EXIF data of the photo easily along with exposure bias, metering, focal length, and white balance. The best feature of this shortcut is that you can select one or multiple photos together and share the photos to the shortcut from the share sheet. Then, it will display the EXIF data of multiple photos at a once time if you select multiple photos. If no photo is selected, then it will ask you to select a photo.
Conclusion
The shortcut app has changed the way of doing multiple tasks by tapping once. Apart from the above-mentioned shortcut, there are plenty of shortcuts available for various categories such as Health & Fitness, Entertainment, Music, Graphics & Design, and more. There are many websites present where you will find already-built shortcuts for various categories such as ROUTINEHUB, and Shortcuts Gallery. You can download the shortcut from these sites directly on your iPhone’s shortcut app and can use them. We will explore the more useful shortcuts in another article from various categories that will unlock the potentiality of your iPhone and save a lot of time.
