Automate Shortcuts with Personal Automations on the iPad and iPhone

Dan Wassink 0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can automate shortcuts on the iPad and iPhone. Basically, what we can do is run a shortcut based on specific conditions. Let’s see what I mean. Let’s first look at this on the iPad. Let’s go to my iPad. So I’m in the shortcuts app here. And what I would like to do is set up an automation to where music will start playing an hour after sunrise. So I need to automate a shortcut that plays music. Well, the first thing that we need to do is we need to go over to where we can set up our automations here. So I select automation, you will not see this on the Mac, this is iPad and iPhone only. So I select automation here. And then we have two different types of automation. We have Home Hub, which is for home kit. And then we also have personal automations, we’re going to look at personal automations.

Here, this is what we’re setting up. So I select this. From here, what I need to do is set the condition. So when will this shortcut run, as you can see, we have a number of different conditions here, it can be the time of day, it can be one of them alarm goes off, it can be when you arrive somewhere or leave somewhere, I can also have it when we connect up to a Wi Fi network or Bluetooth, including your car, you can have it be when your device goes into low power mode. So we have a number of different conditions here that we can run a shortcut from. So I’m going to go with an hour after sunrise. So I go back up to the top and we have time of day I select it. And now what I need to do is I need to select sunrise. So when I select sunrise, I can set an offset. I want it to be an hour after sunrise get a little sleep in there. So now I just go down to the bottom here and you’re gonna see hour after sunrise. I tap on Done. And now I have my condition set an hour after sunrise. My iPad is going to do something but what is it going to do? Well, what we do is we tap on next year. And then we add our action. This is where we set what we want it to do. I want it to play music. So I select Add Action. I type in here play music. And now it’s going to play music. But what music is it going to play? Well, I want easy listening. So I select music here you can see it’s blue light blue here. So I select it means I can select it. And then I type in here, easy listening.

I have here easy listening essentials. I select it, and then we tap on the plus. So now I’ve just added that playlist. The next thing I want to do is I want to shuffle this, I don’t want to wake up to the same music in the same order every morning. Let’s shuffle it up a little bit. So now I go over to the arrow here, select it. And then I select shuffle. Go over to off here and then we select songs. And I select next. So now my automation is all set on the iPad, we can see it’s going to be an hour after sunrise. And what it’s going to do is play music. I do not want to have it asked me before running. If I leave this on, what is going to do is pop up an alert and say do you want me to run this, I just wanted to run it. So now I just tap on little slider here, turn it off. Now all I need to do is just tap on Done. And we can see we have my automation all set. An hour after sunrise, it’s going to start playing music, it is not going to ask me it’ll just automatically start playing music, easy listening music, and it’s going to shuffle it. So that’s how we set up automations on the iPad. Well, what about the iPhone? Well, it works pretty similar.

Let’s go over to my iPhone here. And what we need to do is we need to go down to automation here, select it. And then we go over to her personal automation. Again, this is what we’re setting up. First thing I need to do is set the condition you can see we have all the same conditions. With this automation, what I’d like to do is have my iPhone go into low power mode when the battery hits 50%. Let’s say the battery’s getting a little bit weak. So I wanted to go into low power mode early. By default, what it will do is it’ll go into low power mode at 20%. And it’ll ask you, that’s what Apple’s default behavior is. I just wanted to go into low power mode. Don’t ask me just go into low power mode at 50%. We can do this through an automation. So the condition is when the battery hits 50%. So I just swipe up, and you’re gonna see we have here, battery level. By default, it goes to 50%. But I could go and change it, but I’m just going to leave it at 50% here. I tap on Next. And now we have my condition setup. Now what do I want it to do? Well, this is where I go and add my action, select Action, I click in here, and I’m going to type in low power mode. You’re going to see I have here set low power mode. And then it’s going to turn it on. I click on next. I also want to turn off asked before running, I just wanted to go into low power mode.

So now I just turn the slider off. And now what it’s going to do is go into low power mode when my battery gets to 50%. And it’s not going to ask me, all I have to do now is just click on Done. And I’ve just set up that automation. Now you’ll notice that let’s go to both of my iPad and iPhone here, you’ll notice that these automations do not sync all of the shortcuts sync across all of your different devices. If I go over to my shortcuts here on both devices, all of these different shortcuts sync across all my different devices. Even if the shortcut doesn’t run on this specific device, I could create a Mac shortcut, I can still see it on the iPad, I can still see it on the iPhone, but it won’t run on the iPad or iPhone. But with automation, so let’s go back over to my automations on both devices, you will see that they do not sync. So automations are set up per device. So if you want to use the same automation on multiple devices, you’ll have to set them up individually. So that’s how we can set up automations for shortcuts on the iPad and iPhone. Basically all we have to do is just set up what the condition is when that shortcut is going to run. And then the action and it can include multiple actions. We can only do this on the iPad and iPhone. You cannot do this on the Mac. To set them up. What we need to do is go over to automation on the iPad or iPhone while we’re in the shortcuts app and then select Create personal automation. These are called Personal automations. And again, they do not sync they will not share across different devices. So that’s how we create automations for shortcuts on the iPad and iPhone.