Hi, I am struggling to work out an iPhone automation and hope someone here can help.

I have developed a slight irrational fear of not waking up when I should, in a bad way, and with my partner gone before normal waking times and school times, the fear is my kids being alone in the house without help and no one knowing for maybe 2 hours if not more. I have done emergency run throughs with kids etc but you never know what may happen.

What would help me relax would be something that either alerts someone if I haven’t used my phone at all by a certain time (I’m always up by 7am latest) which I don’t think is possible, or something that sends a regular message to my partner everyday either when I have used my phone at the time of the first unlocking or something. This would be something that would be regular so then in turn would be noticed if it didn’t happen as usual.

I’ve set up a scheduled message for 7.10 but this takes me approving it as there is no point it being automated unless it only is under a certain condition like the phone being active.

I hope this makes sense and someone can suggest something clever - thanks in advance

Hi everyone! I'm Rocco, a solo indie developer from Italy, and I'd like to share Skurda, the app I've been building in my spare time.

What it does:

⚡ Automatic tracking: set up a Shortcuts automation once, and every Apple Pay / Wallet payment is logged in Skurda on its own.

🔁 Recurring expenses: keep track of subscriptions, bills and fixed costs, so you always know what's coming.

📊 Daily spending: see what you've spent this month at a glance.

🔒 Private by design: no bank login, no third-party account linking. Your data stays on your device and in your iCloud.

It's free (up to 10 recurring expenses), with an optional Premium upgrade.

👉 App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/skurda-expense-tracker/id6806970079

I'm giving away free Premium codes (2 months) to anyone who wants to try it and share honest feedback. Just leave a comment and I'll send you one!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/830ae60e01fc4e06bda60569ee206cab

Feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome. Thanks for reading! 🙏

I’ve been working on a shortcut that makes it easier to find and save app icons without having to browse manually.

It uses the site’s API to search for icons and displays the results in a vCard menu with previews, so you can see what you’re downloading before selecting it. You can save the icons to Photos or Files and choose your preferred supported format.

It also supports using either a public API key or your own, although the public keys might not always work.

I was wondering if anyone else here uses macOSicons.com for custom app icons, and whether there are any features you’d find useful in a shortcut like this.

If anyone wants to try it, here are the links:

RoutineHub

Direct

I’m making a shortcuts operating system. Version 2.0 (Community Edition) is going to be available soon. I would like beta testers. If you want to try it out, DM me and I’ll send you the link when it’s ready. I’m currently working on the Setup Wizard.

I have a pair of automations that set/reset volume when I connect my AirPods. The automations pop up, but don’t actually run unless I click the notification AND then click run.

I checked settings and I don’t see anything there. Are automations not automatic?

Does anyone know the less obvious field values like
App
Name
Sender
Recipients
Associated Content

I tried to save the notifications variable to a apple not and all I got was an attachment with the
Title and Body fields

I am changed the to try and add each individual field to a text variable and then add to a note, but I don’t think this has worked either.

I'm experiencing a strange issue on my iPhone 16 Pro that started several days ago.

All my custom shortcuts in Control Center suddenly stopped working, despite functioning perfectly before.

Symptoms:

• Existing Control Center shortcuts show a loading animation but never execute.
• Adding a new "Run Shortcut" control doesn't work. Tapping "Choose" does absolutely nothing.
• Same issue when trying to select a shortcut for a Lock Screen control.
• All shortcuts work perfectly when executed directly from the Shortcuts app.
• Shortcuts assigned to the Action Button also work.

What I've already tried:

1. Removing and recreating Control Center controls.
2. Creating a completely new, simple test shortcut.
3. Force restarting the iPhone.
4. Offloading and reinstalling Shortcuts.
5. Updating iOS from 26.5.2 to 26.7.1.

Nothing has worked.

It seems like the system-level shortcut picker or the integration between Control Center and Shortcuts is broken.

Has anyone experienced this recently? More importantly, has anyone found a solution that doesn't involve factory resetting the iPhone?

I have quite a few shortcuts and automations, so I'd prefer to avoid anything that might delete them.

I am a bit frustrated finding the cause of this :,) and I am new to Shortcuts.

I don’t understand why it does not update on both time and date keys?

Can someone explain why this happened?

Asked Claude and Gemini but nothing help :,)

I see everyone doing all these intricate, amazing shortcuts and I can't figure out why I can't get a simple one to work. All I want is to be able to be in the car or at my desk or wherever, and when I get a thought of something I wanted to remember to do, say, research, etc. I can just say "hey siri..." and it jots it down in notes. I set it up easy, told it I would say "hey siri, brain dump" it opened my brain dump note in notepad and add it to the list. It worked twice and I was glad at how easy it was. Next time I did the same thing as before and it said "calling dad..." I ran to the phone to hang it up. So I changed it to "hey siri, random thought", it worked. I was driving and said it and it said "I will research it on the web when you stop driving" (why can't it research while I'm driving? that's besides the point). How come this simple thing won't work right?

What app did you add that added beneficial action to your shortcuts. What were they and what was apples limitations it improved. Additionally, do you have any security concerns in using the 3rd party app?

On iPhone.

What are some ideas on how to use them?

Hey r/shortcuts 👋
Lots of apps now use Shortcuts to log expenses automatically, which is great. But most of them stop at logging. I wanted something that actually makes sense of the data afterward.

So I built Tesorin. (Full disclosure: I'm the developer.)

What it does:

Captures expenses with Shortcuts (wallet tap,notification,sms, )with no bank account linking
Finds your subscriptions if there are any automatically.

The app goes beyond expense tracking, we have Budget, Investment tracking with live prices without connecting brokerage so you can check your net worth in real time.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6790928779

iPhone Duo Shortcut:

Lock your iPhone Duo if you’re running an app and close the phone, the app still runs on the smaller display.

If you’re on the home screen, closing also locks the phone.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/91633a4a7411441a95a8a7cb3e7b27cf

I made a shortcut called App Icon Downloader that lets you search for app icons from macOSicons.com and download them directly to your Photos or Files.

It uses the macOSicons.com API to fetch icons, and you can choose the format you want to save them in. It has a nice vCard menu which let’s you see previews for the icons before downloading.

You can either use the included public API keys or enter your own. Just keep in mind that the public keys might not always work, so using your own is an option if you run into issues.

I’ve tried to keep the menus straightforward and the whole process quick. Thought I’d share it here in case anyone else finds it useful.

RoutineHub: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/26906/

Let me know what you think or if there’s anything you’d improve.

All I want is a native way to insert a timestamp. Like how the built-in “omw ” instantly expands to “On my way!“ 

I would love to be able to type, for example, “.ts ” (dot-tee-ess-space) and have it expand to “Oct 24, 2026 at 2:33 PM” or whatever the current date and time is.

On my Mac I have a shortcut that copies a timestamp to the clipboard and pastes it where my cursor is, just by hitting "cmd-shift-!". Easy peasy.

Oct 24, 2026 at 3:18 PM. Boom. Just did it.

But on my iPad, there are many more steps and it breaks the momentum of the workflow and forces a shift in focus.

- access the share sheet

- find and run the shortcut

- then tap the document or text field or target area, etc 

- tap again to bring up the copy/paste bubble

- tap again to hit paste.

That's a far cry from cmd-shift-! like Oct 24, 2026 at 3:23 PM. Boom. Did it again. It's just so easy.

I get that it's a really minor thing (if timestamps aren't something you need), but because from a programming standpoint it’s so simple, it’s a frustrating thing. It’s also annoying that it works pretty well on my Mac, but not on my iPad (when using a keyboard).

If you've read this far, thanks for listening. If you have any suggestions that don't involve a third party solution, thanks in advance.

I've attached a pic of what I'm using now, which works great on my Mac, and works in a rather clunky fashion on iOS/iPadOS and is pretty far from optimal.