Ask Siri to Run a Shortcut on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone

0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can use Siri to run any one of our shortcuts on our Mac, iPad and iPhone, we’re first going to look at this on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac. So I’m looking at my shortcuts app here, and I have this shortcut called Stop distractions, what this is going to do is put my Mac into reading mode, it’s going to open up the books app, and then it’s going to quit all of the other apps. So basically, I can focus on reading. In order to run this shortcut, let’s go ahead and quit out of the shortcuts app. In order to run this using Siri, all I have to do is pull up Siri, and then say stop distractions, I say the title of the shortcut. So I’m going to use Siri up here in my menu bar, I’m not going to use Hey, Siri throughout this lesson here, I’m going to use it manually. So I click on this and I say stop distractions.

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Stop distractions.

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And now what it’s going to do is open up the books app, and then put it into the reading focus mode and quit all of the other apps.

1:08
Now, if you want to change what you need to say to Siri to open up a shortcut, or run a shortcut, all you have to do is change the name of the shortcut. So I’m going to close this here. And now let’s go back over into my shortcuts app. Let’s go ahead and close Siri there. Now I want to change the name of this, I want to change it to I want to read. So all I have to do is just change this name. Now I can double click on it. And then I can go up to the top left corner here and type in here I want to read

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what you’ll want to do is make sure that you hit the return key. When you want to make sure that we hit the return key when we’re up here. If we don’t hit the return key, it’s not going to save your new name. So I hit the return key. And when I close this, we can see I want to read. Another way of doing this is by holding down the control key. And then I click and then you’re going to see rename, so you can rename it through that way as well. So now all I need to do to run this shortcut is say I want to read once I pull up Siri, so do that again. I go up to Siri, I want to read.

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And now it’s going to quit out of the shortcuts app and then open up the books app.

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So that’s how we use Siri on the Mac. Now let’s take a look at this on the iPad and the iPhone. It basically works the same way. Let’s first look at this on the iPad. All I need to do is just pull up Siri and then I just say the shortcut name here. And again, if I want to change the name or change what I need to say, all I have to do is just click on the three dots here. This is how you edit the name here. And then we go up to the top here, I click in here. And then I changed the name. So I just double click, type in what I want. I hit return again, always hit return. And then when you’re done, you just click on Done. And now if I want to read I would just pull up Siri. And then say I want to read you can imagine it’s going to work the same way on the iPhone. So I’m in my shortcuts app on my iPhone. I’m going to go to all shortcuts. And now if I want to pull up I want to read I do not have to be in the shortcuts app, all I have to do is just pull up Siri. And then I just say I want to read and it’ll run that shortcut.

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I want to change the name again, I tap on the three dots for that shortcut.

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I go up to the top and I change the name. Once I’m done, I hit done in the lower right hand corner. And then that new name is what I use to run that shortcut. So as you can see, it’s pretty simple and pretty powerful. You can set what you want to say to run any one of your shortcuts just by naming that shortcut. And this works on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. So that’s how you’re on shortcuts with Siri on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. The key to making this work if you change the name is make sure that you hit return. What I have found is in some cases, if you don’t hit Return, it’s not going to remember what you named it so then it’s not going to work. So just name the shortcut what you want. And then when you say hey Siri or pull up Siri, all you have to do is just speak that shortcut name and your Mac, iPad or iPhone will run that shortcut. So that’s how you run shortcuts with Siri on the Mac, iPad and iPhone.