An Apple Shortcuts masterclass

29:12So if you're walking together and you kind of want captions because, again, there are some car dads really revving and you can't hear anything that's going on around you. And you're just trying to hear your family members talking to you. well and you're walking and there's cars around you can't just be looking to the person to the side of you the entire time just so the captions are accurate to the person you're talking to you're you know you're walking you have situational awareness you're going to be looking around and all of a sudden it's going to be captioning Jimbo Bob over there and give they feel like a spy again because you're not supposed to be listening in on Jimbo Bob's conversations so like with a lot of the use cases there's like oh there's a lot of great power that can come with this.

29:53And then, oh, here's a way that an asshole could truly make this horrible. And that's kind of what terrifies me about this technology, to be quite frank. What would an asshole do with it is like a key question that every product manager should ask about everything all the time, and not enough people do it. No. Which is like the asshole test should be everywhere in the tech industry. Like, you really need to think about what having a very discreet piece of what could be spyware on many people's faces will do when an asshole comes to town like i think earlier this month uh san francisco university had to issue a warning because some asshole and uh the ray-ban metas was going around trying to film young college girls for his uh live stream the channel asking inappropriate questions and you're like hmm that's only one guy not great there's a lot of people.

30:50Not great. No, there's a lot of people taking innocuous concert footage out here with these glasses. Sure, that's an appropriate venue. Like, it makes sense. And then there's this guy being a jerk doing that. And there's increasing examples of that being reported upon because these are becoming increasingly popular. So it's one thing when you just have a first-gen device and not many people have them. You put them into the hands of a lot of people. These are very powerful in certain ways. What is the asshole going to do? And how is Meta preparing for the assholes? Are they going to take a proactive stance?

31:26Or are they going to just point to their dinky privacy policy, which boils down to, there's a recording light and don't be a jerk. So it seems like you've come out of this process being like, it's impressive that these things are as good as they are, and yet they're still not that good. And we still haven't answered maybe the most fundamental question of all, which is, do we want these things? Like, is this a thing we want? Here's what I'm going to say. I've demoed this to very many people, double-digit numbers of people, because they ask about it. And universally, every single interaction has gone this way.

32:04They've gone like, oh, wow, that's so cool. Too fucking bad, Meta makes it, you know? And that, I think, is something that Meta really has to sit down and think about and do some soul-searching. Will they? I don't know. But I really do think that they have to do that because, you know, Mark Zuckerberg came out on an earnings call and said that if you don't have these, you're going to be, I believe the phrasing was significantly cognitively disadvantaged. And I was like, I don't I don't like that because, first of all, not everyone can wear this pair of glasses. The the display is only in the right lens.

32:38So if you have any problems in your right eye, they can't switch it to the left lens because it's so the process is so complicated. So you are leaving out a decent swath of people that way. I have garbage eyes. If I wasn't capable of wearing contacts and not everyone is capable of wearing contacts, I wouldn't be able to use this display. My bestie came to visit me and she has a lazy eye. And so I put them on her and she's like, yeah, I actually can't view the display because it's monocular. So, you know, you're leaving a lot of people out and then saying that if you don't have one of these glasses, you're cognitively disadvantaged.

33:10That is putting your foot in it in a really horrible way. It's also just dumb and wrong. Like, it's just, it's flatly incorrect. It is incorrect. And then on the other side of things, I have had so many wonderful conversations with the disabled community. You know, blind and low vision people who really have had their lives absolutely changed by the fact that you can use these to interact with Be My Eyes, to have AI narrate things so that they can live more independently. That is truly wonderful and moving and what we should be using this technology for. I talked to John White, who is a triple amputee, and these glasses and the Oakleys, they allow him to do things and keep his hands free because he only has one hand and it's really valuable for him to have that ability.

33:59So, you know, that's amazing. And I've talked to accessibility experts who are just like, actually, no, this thing is not okay. and just because I need this technology, I shouldn't have to compromise my privacy. And I was like, you know what? I hear you. You're correct. And like, I am not part of that. I have garbage eyes, but I'm not yet part of that community. And so I'm just doing my best to listen to them. Is this what we want? I think the answer for a lot of people, not everyone, for a lot of people is yes. And so then the next question beyond that is, how do we want to use this technology?

34:32So yeah, it's a cursed category right now. It is so cursed. You have all these other glasses on the desk. Is there anything else in those glasses that you've seen that feels like a sort of clear push in the right direction in the way that the neural band is like, this is the early version of a thing? Is there anything in these other glasses that feels like that to you? No, not yet. Currently, no cognitive disadvantage. Just so everyone's super clear. There is no cognitive disadvantage. No cognitive disadvantage. Don't worry about it. You're going to be okay. Don't worry about it. You're going to be fine.

35:07glasses you'll be all right you'll be fine honestly oh uh now it says that i'm low on battery so i will take it off to charge it all right v you have a vacation to go on go get out of here please take off your glasses and rings and all the other stuff go be in the woods for a while we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about apple shortcuts we'll be right back support for the show comes from charles schwab at schwab how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own.

35:43Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

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37:19hours of research in an instant with key insights from an AI assistant. Take a template with a click. Now your Prezo looks super slick. Close that deal. Yeah, you won. Do that, doing that, did that, done. Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat. Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat. It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. All right, we're back. So a thing that happens on this show every once in a while is Apple Shortcuts comes up. For one reason or another, it's a way people do a lot of things, especially on their iPhones, but also on Macs and iPads and other Apple devices.

37:57I am of the mind and I'm on the record on this show many times that Apple Shortcuts is sort of a failed idea. I think the thesis behind Apple Shortcuts is really interesting, but the app is too hard and too complicated and just requires you to have like a PhD in computer science to do anything useful with your device. And so like, congratulations, you've created a programming app. I don't know what we're accomplishing here. Every time I say this, there's one person who shows up in my replies and in the comments telling me I'm a moron. And that person is Steven Robles, who is the host of a very good YouTube channel with his name on it, who makes all kinds of really great, mostly shortcuts based stuff.

38:39But he also talks a lot about Apple gear and other things. He also has a podcast called Primary Technology. And also, I think his full-time job is yelling at me on the internet about Apple shortcuts. So I figured we just needed to have this out once and for all. So I invited Stephen to come on the show, and we're going to see who is right. Is shortcuts bad or is shortcuts good? Spoiler alert, I'm going to win. Let's get into it. Stephen Rolis, welcome to The Verge Cast. Thanks so much for having me, David. This is the prize fight people have demanded for a long time. one of my favorite interactions on the internet is that every once in a while I go on the Vergecast and I complain about Apple Shortcuts and then almost every time without fail you say no you're very dumb Apple Shortcuts is great here are a bunch of cool things I have done with Apple Shortcuts so we're just going to have this out once and for all right now so but I want to like I want to basically start with you which is you're a person who is like deeply invested in Shortcuts and this is like a thing you have actually spent a lot of time working on and figuring out.

39:41When did you become a shortcuts person? I used the workflow app when it first came out on iPhone because it seemed to do things that were just impossible. Like how can Apple allow this? Turns out they just bought it so they can say it's their app. But I did it all the way back then. And I followed great minds like Federico Faticci and Matthew Cassinelli, where I learned about shortcuts first. And as soon as you find one or two shortcuts that are genuinely useful to you, I think you just get hooked. And so now I I just checked my library. I have 1100. Many I've built for other people, which is what I kind of built my YouTube channel on, and many that I use every day.

40:14Do you remember the first one that you were like, okay, I've done something here? I remember the first one that went viral because it was during the pandemic. And my first TikTok video, I made a shortcut that pulled images from Unsplash and set it as your wallpaper on your iPhone with just a tap. And it blew people's minds. And that first just went everywhere. I was just surprised it actually worked. So that one was pretty cool. Okay. So that's actually like a perfect example of my issue with shortcuts. And I just, I think I am on record as saying I hate Apple shortcuts, but I want to explain to you why I hate Apple shortcuts.

40:50And then I want you to refute it specifically and show me lots of examples because I think Apple shortcuts is a terrific and fascinating idea. Like this idea that what you have is like deep infrastructural access to all of the stuff happening on your phone and your devices is a cool idea, right? Like that, that's actually how computers should work. We should be able to program all of these things such that they operate the way that we want them to and put them together in ways that they have not thought to put themselves together. The actual product itself, I think is a mess. And I think it asks way too much of you.

41:27It is vastly overcomplicated, even when you want to do very simple things. it just it is it is a good idea that they should have given to a regular person ever anywhere in the process of creating workflow and then apple shortcuts and instead i i think it's a developer tool and i think it's a good developer tool but i think it is a developer tool masquerading as something else and that that is the disconnect that has always driven me crazy is like this is not this is not like a neat if this then that quick do make a thing do a thing kind of app this is a developer tool. Yeah, I think you're wrong.

42:01But I will say, you know, I met some of the shortcuts team when I went to WWDC. They're an amazing team. They're doing awesome work. Shortcuts is buggy. Things like syncing actually across your devices. I shortcut my break after months of using it. So we'll fully admit there are some bugs there. But I think saying it is a developer tool, it's a little too far because there are a lot of one action shortcuts that I've shared in Reels and TikTok that people go nuts for, even simple things like toggling control center with a back tap on your iPhone or unlocking your orientation on iPhone when you open the Photos app.

42:34Those are one action automations that people find really valuable or enabling low power mode when your battery drops below a certain percentage. And it's something that I think most people, I show them step by step, I do it in under 60 seconds usually, that they end up doing it. And to Apple's credit, being able to share a shortcut with a link, downloading it and being able to run it on your device, even it could be super complicated on the back end. That sharing system that Apple's built in there, I think it actually helps shortcuts be even more useful to more people. That I will give you. And I think that's actually I give you a lot of credit for really like leaning into that where you're like, I am the I will figure this stuff out for you.

43:13And I think like you mentioned Federico Vettici, he does a really good job of this, too, of like I have done the. outrageous amount of legwork to make this incredibly complicated thing happen. One shortcut I use all the time, just it's specific to my own job, is the Mac Stories Apple Frames one, which basically you take a screenshot of your iPhone, run Apple Frames, and it will put that screenshot into a thing that looks like a picture of an iPhone and then have it that way. So instead of just sharing like a naked screenshot, you have what looks like a picture of an iPhone with the screenshot on the screen.

43:45it's the sort of thing that like i don't know that people who you don't do what we do for a living need but like for me as somebody who publishes pictures of app screens all the time that's very helpful and it's like i've actually looked at the actual like body of that shortcut it is so unbelievably complicated but i just clicked a link and it showed up and it was a shortcut so i think that the sharing mechanism there is awesome but to me that's like that's like saying there are apps in the app store you know what i mean like just because i can get it easily doesn't mean it's easy to do but that's also the beauty of it because apps are really complicated to build i tried to vibe code it and failed but that doesn't mean apps shouldn't exist because most people can't build them same way in shortcuts i think it's even more beautiful because you can have those super complicated shortcuts even ones that access apis which i'll show you in a minute and do all of that share one link and someone downloads it or someone can have a really simple one.

44:38I'm gonna show you a shortcut right now. Can I show you a shortcut? Yeah, please. So one, I think, and this went viral a little bit, but if someone's commuting and they're going home and they text their partner every day, I'll be home in this many minutes. Well, you can create a simple shortcut. I call it my home ETA. And when you run it, it gets your current location, directions home, and then auto creates a text, be home in 43 minutes. And that's it. And I can even have that send automatically and even run it from my Apple watch. And so a simple use case like that that applies to a lot of people, people like, oh, yeah, I'll buy in.

45:09And that's like a three step shortcut. I can show it in one screen. You just have to put in your home address and then you customize it for yourself. And so little things like that, that touch a nerve, something you do every day that you can now automate. I think people respond to. Yes. And I think in a certain way, that is actually like the promise of Siri. And that's I think, to be honest, part of what has always driven me crazy about Apple shortcuts is that the way that should actually work is I should just be able to tell my assistant what to do, right? Like, tell my wife, tell my wife when I'm going to be home is like a perfectly plausible thing that actually my phone contains all of the information to do and can't.

45:48And I think like, this is again, I think the like underlying fascinating thing about shortcuts is that it is the only tool really on the iPhone, but really kind of anywhere that has the access to all of those pieces in order to be able to do all of that stuff. Show me the back end of that shortcut. When you say it's three steps and it's really simple, I just flatly don't believe you. So show me how this shortcut actually works. I'm going to go to my home ETA shortcut. And that's the thing. A lot of the shortcuts I make, they're just slight tweaks of it. So here's the shortcut. You put in your home.

46:20That's not my home address. So you could show it on screen. That's fine. You put in your address, another action, get driving directions from current location to that address. I created this text, which you can customize, be home in so many minutes. And then I'm going to send the message. So four actions, and that's it. And you can send this, and you can put this on your Apple Watch. You can run it from wherever. And this one, I used all the time when I was commuting. And so that's pretty simple, right? Yeah. In the scheme of things, yes. But again, even that is like, there's a certain set of, if you did those same steps in a different order, it would fail.

46:54Yeah, well, again, that's the risk. When you have something this powerful or capable of something that powerful, You could totally screw it up if you move things around. And I have so many people, like when I share a shortcut, they're like, this didn't work. That didn't work. And it's like, okay, well, what iPhone do you have? Like one really cool action is you can toggle silent mode with a shortcut. So if you have an action button iPhone, you can create one. And I have one where when I put my iPhone on my charger, silent mode disables. This way I can leave the room and I'll actually hear a ringtone.

47:21But when I take it off the charger, silent mode toggles back on. That's a one-step automation, one action. The problem is if you have an older iPhone with a silent mute switch, you don't get that shortcut section because Apple doesn't want you to toggle silent mode when you have a physical switch that might be in the other orientation. So there's weird things like that. Sure. It actually won't let you do it. It's like having two light switches for the same light. And so one is always down and one is always up. And Apple is just trying to avoid that. So I already know the answer, but I asked, what iPhone do you have?

47:50And they'll say, well, I have an iPhone 14. I was like, okay, well, you can't do it. So there's stuff like that. And now Apple Intelligence, there is a whole other world of do you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer? Can you run Apple Intelligence and that? But some of the things you can do with that are super powerful. Can I show you one more example? Please. This one's using Apple Intelligence. Now, this one went real viral. So this is on Instagram. And I see a lot of recipes on Instagram. And a lot of times you can save the reel, but then it just kind of gets stuck. Like it's in Instagram. You never actually use it.

48:18So this shortcut will actually take the Instagram reel. It pulls the raw HTML in the background, gives it to Apple Intelligence, and will pull the ingredients and steps if the creator put it in the caption of the post. And it's going to create an Apple note where it just that quickly did it in real time. So now I have the ingredients and a nicely formatted list, the steps, and an even link back to that reel if I want to go back and refer to the actual video. This one, hundreds of thousands of views. People love this. This is complicated, not something most people are going to build on their own, and they can mess it up easily, but really useful.

48:51So why should that be a shortcut as opposed to a feature of an app? I mean, and it is like some of the like food specific apps do do that already. You can plug in an Instagram link and they've done some like interesting back end API work to pull that information out. Like why is shortcuts the right venue to do something like that? Why shouldn't Instagram build that or why shouldn't that be a feature of Apple Notes? It could be. And there are actually apps like I see Instagram ads for apps specifically for saving recipes. guess what? They're subscription models and they're like full of ads. So you can literally do the same thing built in.

49:27And that's kind of the advantage of shortcuts being first party, has access to all of that. But shortcuts is way more powerful than just doing what an app can do. To your point, Apple Frames, which was an awesome shortcut Fatici built, I actually use an app called ShareShot now, which is amazing. And I can frame screenshots from my control center. I'll actually show you, I'll show you this real quick. This is not a shortcut, but because you can actually put third-party actions in the control center. ShareShot has a one button. It takes my last screenshot and frames it that quickly. So, you know, some apps actually are better maybe than a shortcut, but with shortcuts, you can customize it.

49:59And I use ChatGPT the most in shortcuts. Like for my podcasts, I will run a shortcut on a Safari tab group, which takes all my links, sends it to ChatGPT. I ask it for title and description suggestions in the background. It's all running in my Mac menu bar. And then I get all my show notes formatted because of a shortcut and ChatGPT built into that. That's not something a standalone app is going to do. And it would take a lot of time to do that manually. And so that's what makes it useful on a personal use case. I was going to ask you if you thought that as these AI tools get better, even the foundation models on iPhones, but also ChatGPT and Claude and all this other stuff that is sort of increasingly being integrated onto the device, if that ends up obviating shortcuts, because again, you can just like declare your intention to chat gpt and it'll figure out how to go do it for you spoiler alert none of that works but like someday it might uh shortcuts doesn't either so you know whatever but uh but does does as ai stuff gets better does it make shortcuts less necessary like does it obviate the whole idea of sort of building the system yourself but it sounds like actually you're seeing it more as like a tool inside of the tool yeah i think it's actually going to make shortcuts even more powerful.

51:09I recently did a video on macOS shortcuts because now you have folder automations built into Mac shortcuts. And so you can do things like whenever I drop an MP3 file into my downloads folder, I want shortcuts to automatically transcribe, which is a built-in action, and then summarize it with Apple Intelligence or ChatGPT and create an Apple Note with a summary of that audio file. It happens all automatically, all in the background. And then you can build on top of that, even asking it for, you know, key points or write a blog post based on this podcast. And that makes those AI tools even more powerful because it's now built into my Mac on a folder automation.

51:44So and I even showed in that video, you can create a shortcuts automation that when I receive an email with this in the subject line, take whatever's attached to that email, summarize it and make an Apple note of that. So now there's zero action on your part, you just get an email, maybe it's like monthly report, you know, you get that email every month. And you can literally look in Apple notes in a few seconds later for a summary of that attachment and Shortcuts did it all behind the scenes. That's very cool. So walk me through your creative process on this a little bit, because I think I'm realizing as you're describing some of these that part of my issue with Shortcuts is it has a real kind of cold start problem that you sort of open up the app and it doesn't give you a ton of ideas or guidance, right?

52:25You get the apps that sort of show you the basic stuff they can do, but there aren't a lot of sort of finished ideas for you sitting there that are like, you do this all the time, maybe make it a shortcut. So you're coming up with this stuff kind of as a real sort of creative endeavor. Like what does your process look like? Well, I'm thankful because I've just shared shortcuts I've loved. And now my YouTube channel is basically just building shortcuts that people are asking for. So every time I post a video, you know, there's dozens of comments. I have my own shortcuts community where people request shortcuts.

52:56And so now I actually get requests that I never would have gotten before. Like pilots will reach out to me and it's like, Can I create a shortcut that when I start it, it logs, you know, the day, the time, the weather. And then when I tap it again at the end of the flight, it automatically logs the time in the air and all this kind of stuff. And so I'm inspired by my users to do that. But if you're new to shortcuts, I will actually give the shortcuts team credit. The gallery of shortcuts, they update that a lot. There's even Apple Intelligence examples in there now. There's easy shortcuts that are like make a meme from an image, you know, just fun things that you can try.

53:28So if you're new, I would check the gallery. For me, I look to my viewers, my listeners, and just my own workflow. Like when I think of, I do a daily podcast now, and I think, how can I get the daily news the fastest? Well, my first idea is just shortcuts. And so I know shortcuts can pull from RSS feeds. I know it can summarize. I know it can create a note for me and basically create a whole podcast script in a few minutes. And so that's what I did. I figured out, can I build this to suit my work needs? But then also I'll learn that, oh, shoot, Movie Database has an API that I can tap into with shortcuts and I can suck down the rabbit hole.

54:02And I've created a custom ChatGPT that's trained on shortcuts and trained on APIs. And so I'll ask it because I'm not a developer, like you're saying. I'll be like, how can I pull the latest movie trailers from the Movie Database API? And ChatGPT, to its credit, will give me the API URL. I can plug it into a shortcut. and then I'll spend a Saturday afternoon building like four or five shortcuts just with movie database API stuff. And it's super fun. Let's talk through this one because one of the ones you recently were showing off in a video that I was watching is a movie trailer one. And Stephen, I say this with love.

54:34YouTube has movie trailers. Like this is a solved problem. Okay. If you want a movie trailer, it's pretty easy to find a movie trailer. But you built a thing that I actually think is like a really fascinating interface on top of this. So let's walk through this one a little bit because I think it is just the right amount of complicated to talk through this. So start at the beginning. Like what was the beginning idea of the movie trailer shortcut? So I saw a TikTok from a lawyer creator. I forget her name right now. Or read for the rebrand, I think is her name. But she said she used to love the trailers app, which if you remember like Front Row on Mac and the trailers app, it was an app just for movie trailers.

55:10And I love trailers. I would go there all the time. That app doesn't exist anymore. And yes, you can go on YouTube and search for trailers. But as you probably know, there's lots of random trailers besides like the official trailer. And so, you know, it's just, I want the official trailer, the actual one that people might've seen in theaters. So I thought, does Movie Database offer that as something I can pull from the API? And so I'll show you the whole backend because it's complicated, but this shortcut, it finds the movies that are either new releases, new trailers or in theaters. And so there's a couple like get dates and format dates.

55:44And I'm using the Movie Database API to give me a list to choose from. And so I actually get to choose from a list. I see the titles and the release dates so I know what movie I'm choosing from. And then, because there's dictionary actions and things I don't understand, I actually use some Apple Intelligence actions to parse those dictionaries. And what it does is it finds the official trailer on YouTube. So when I run this shortcut, it will actually give me a list of the latest trailers. So you got Tron Aries there, which I heard is not very good. But when I tap that, it'll bring me directly to the official trailer on YouTube and I can start playing it.

56:18And so, yes, I can open the YouTube app, tap the search field, type in Tron, hit search, look for the official trailer. But we are talking seven or eight taps. Whereas if I just want this quasi app on my home screen, I can tap the shortcut, choose from the list, and now I'm watching the official trailer of some of the newest movies. I just Googled Tron trailer and it showed it to me. I'm just saying. Okay, but it's also pretty cool. I'm just saying. But I created another one where you can actually search for a specific trailer. So if you wanted to watch the original Jaws trailer, you can run my shortcut and then place that.

56:49I bet you that's not going to show it first up. Probably not. And I do think the first screen of that is actually the one that's most interesting to me. That's sort of like, here are new movies you might want to watch the trailer of. Because that, to your point, is not a solved problem on the internet anymore. Right? Like, here's some movies with some trailers out that you might want to watch. That's new. So, okay, we go back to the actual making of this shortcut for me. Because this is like for folks listening and not watching, just sort of not necessarily step by step, but like run through how this thing actually works and what it's doing.

57:23So basically, I formatted the date because the API for through movie database, you can tell it like, look at this release date window. So I formatted the date. So it has a beginning and end date. This whole long URL in the text block. I have no idea what that is. HVT gave that to me because I asked it what the API is. So I just copy and pasted. I did know where to put in the release date variables, which is a big thing in shortcuts. Get contents of URL is an action you would use with a lot of APIs. And basically, it's just pulling then from that API the results that that API gives you in different ways.

57:55And then I call it a second time to actually get the URL for that video. And so that's what it's doing. And a lot of shortcuts, once you get to more advanced levels, repeat with each. And so once it gets all the results from the API, then I repeat the process of getting the title and the URL with each so it can show you in that list and then it can quickly load it. So, you know, there's some advanced steps. But again, I use that with 11 Labs. You know, if I wanted to generate my voice in AI, I don't go to the 11 Labs website and paste text. I can literally run a shortcut and it will generate it with my custom voice in 11 Labs and just output an MP3 file.

58:30And so that's an interesting one, actually, because that is just a pure you're taking a thing you could do on a website and you're doing it in shortcuts. Why do it in shortcuts? Because there's so much more to that shortcut ahead of the 11 labs part, like getting a full article, maybe summarizing it, inserting some of my language and then generating it. So that's like all the shortcuts I run for my podcast and like for my YouTube videos. It's all like RSS based. It's pulling things from the web and summarizing behind the scenes, all stuff that it would be like it would just end when you have to repeat it, like with multiple articles.

59:04Let's say, show me, you know, the top articles from The Verge. and because I subscribe, you know, I get the whole RSS feed. And so I can choose a few articles that I want, get the summary, it spits it out into a note rather than having to go click around or even go to a great RSS reader. It all does it in the background for me. And then you click all the links six or seven times and click on all the ads just to, yeah, no, I get it. That makes sense. No, I think, I mean, part of what you're making me realize is, is actually the, the thing shortcuts does is like the promise of all of the agentic AI stuff, right?

59:37Which is just, I'm going to do a bunch of things in a row on your behalf. And rather than jump around and do things that you can theoretically do, but it's a lot of like uploading and downloading and going from this tab to that tab and this tab to that app, it'll just do it. And I think the thing I like about shortcuts is when they're set up really well to just prompt you along the way that it's like, you know, this is where you record your voice, add this text, anything else you want to do it. And it's able to actually walk you through a process that is very hard to do in software, especially like a cross-platform software just doesn't exist.

1:00:09And the closest thing we found is all of these like AI browsers now are like, we'll let you chat with you. This is when it works a much actually more straightforward version of that user experience, which I think is very cool. And I will say Apple intelligence, you know, on the face of it, it's like Genmoji and it's visual intelligence. but honestly the models action and shortcuts is where the real power is and i've shown a couple shortcuts on my channel but like you can auto sort your apple notes and apple intelligence can actually look at the content of each note which that's what this shortcut does it gets the all my notes from the last week repeats with each note the use model action looks at the content and then i tell it put it into one of these four categories and it will automatically move my notes to certain folders in my notes app.

1:00:55Now, I just screwed it up because I dragged the if statement and shortcuts is, you know, I was 26. It's too easy to drag stuff. But Apple Intelligence can do that in the backend and it can do it to your Apple notes. It can do it to files you drag on your desktop, automatically sort those. So actually it's really powerful. Even photos, like you can give shortcuts, 20 photos and say, the photos that are with people, put them in this folder. The photos with no people, put them in this folder. And shortcuts with the Apple Intelligence actions can even do that. image recognition with that use models action.

1:01:24That's pretty cool, actually. So you mentioned a lot of people are asking you for things and you're starting to build what people are asking for. Are there commonalities across those things? Like, is there a type of thing people are constantly asking for? A lot of text message requests, which is difficult. I've had dozens of people ask me for WhatsApp automations. WhatsApp just doesn't provide shortcuts actions for really deep integration. But one that I keep getting in slight variance is I want an auto text responder because they're a small business owner or, you know, maybe they're an electrician, plumber, and they want to be when they're on vacation to automatically respond to new messages from people that are not in their contacts.

1:02:01And you can actually do that with shortcuts. So I've shared many variations of this where if you have a focus mode enabled or if it checks if you're on vacation through your calendar events, that when someone texts you and they're not in your contacts, you can basically send an away response and say, hey, I'm on vacation. I'll be back soon. You can expect an answer from me here. And that little kind of automation auto text thing, which, yeah, maybe that should be a built in feature of iOS with focus modes and things like that. But the fact that you could do it right now with shortcuts, that's really cool.

1:02:30Yeah. And I think it seems like people are actually better at identifying the sort of tasks they do over and over and over again than maybe I give them credit for it. Like a thing that we've talked about before on the show is that it's very hard to teach people new behaviors because it's very hard to make people understand what those behaviors are, right? Like, especially the things we all do 100 times every day. It's all such a like, fish in water situation that we don't even necessarily realize here are the ways that this could be automated out and would make my life easier. But it seems like actually, maybe there's a big community of people who are aware of this kind of thing.

1:03:05And they're like, well, here's an action I do 20 times every single day. And it's four steps. And maybe there is a way to just make it one or zero. So there is, I mean, Reddit has a huge community, you know, obviously I have my community, but I think once people see, and if you look on TikTok and Reels, there's lots of creators that just share shortcuts and it blows people's minds. Like I did one recently where you can decide what the action button does depending on what app is on screen, which is kind of complicated. It involves an if statement, like if Instagram is open, then do this. If I'm on the home screen, do that.

1:03:36But once people see the power of that, they're like, oh, I can make this button actually useful on my phone. Yeah, I'll do that. And then they can just download the shortcut link. But even something simple, like I get a lot of frequent travelers, they'll be like, what's an easy way to save my hotel room number? And like, you might do the thing I do where you just take a picture of the hotel room number and just look at that. But you could use a shortcut and you can use third-party apps, which there's an awesome ecosystem with apps like DataJar, Toolbox Pro, the Actions app. And DataJar, you can plug that in and say, run the shortcut.

1:04:04I type in my hotel room number. That's saved in DataJar. And then when I go out to dinner, I can run a second shortcut that shows me my room number. and gets me walking directions back to the hotel. So just those simple two or three step things that would normally be a couple apps, swiping back and forth, trying to find that picture again, you can do it easily with shortcuts. Yeah. I do think the one I find most compelling out of all of these use cases is the sort of not a button you press, but like a thing that happens in a certain situation. Like my old colleague, Dan Seifert, had a shortcut that I believe all it did was put on do not disturb as soon as he opened the Kindle app.

1:04:40like that was it yeah it just it just is sort of an instant pause of everything else as soon as i open the kindle app i don't have to remember to do it i don't have to press even one shortcut button to make it happen it just happens and that's the kind of thing that i think is a has a real discovery problem because it's the sort of thing that you're like i don't i don't necessarily process how this should be happening until it happens and i'm like oh i get it now but that's the kind of thing that i think becomes really useful because then you don't ever have to engage with the programming language, right?

1:05:09You download the link, you set it up once and it's done. And at that point, actually, I don't care how complex it is because I don't have to interact with it at all. So that to me is like, that sort of shortcuts, I think is really, really valuable. And I think that's why people watch my videos. You know, they might not use the exact shortcuts that I put in the video description or whatever, but it inspires them to see what's possible and to say, oh, I can do that. And just like even random people, someone I was with, I found out, They write a journal entry every day in Apple Notes. And what they do is they go back to yesterday, select all, copy, paste in a new note, delete what they wrote yesterday, and then start writing today.

1:05:50And I'm like, let me create you a shortcut. Person is not tech savvy, had no idea what shortcuts was. And all I did was create a quick shortcut, which gets today's date, puts the sections that they like writing in for the day in the note, and it creates an Apple Note in that folder in their Apple Notes. I put it on their home screen as an icon they can just tap and they're like, this is awesome. And if that's the only shortcut they ever use, I think it's still valuable that they can do it. It's going to save them time. It's easier. Plus all the automations like you were saying. I'll show my automations.

1:06:19I have a ton of automations, but just simple things that does in the background. Like I changed my Apple Watch face at different times of day. You can automate that with shortcuts. I have my orientation unlock when I open the photos app. I have one complicated one where I don't know if you've ever experienced this, But maybe you open TikTok and Instagram and like your volume was all the way up. And then someone really loud is like yelling at you like me lie on a decoder clip or something. Well, I have an automation here that when I open Instagram or TikTok, my volume goes to zero. So I never have to worry about those moments.

1:06:48That's smart. But does it go back up once you close the app? That was the next request I got when I shared that. This is the thing. You can do it, but you can do that. You would have to save that in data jar. But I'll build you one. I'll build you one. But what I do here is Toolbox Pro has an action that can check, is audio playing? Because one of the things that was annoying is every time I opened Instagram, the podcast I was listening to, like the Vergecast, would stop playing. So now I have an if statement. So it checks, is audio playing? And if audio is playing, which means I already want the volume up, it's not going to do anything.

1:07:20So I can open Instagram. I'm still listening to my podcast. No problem. But if no audio is playing, like in the waiting room or whatever, then it's going to set the media volume to zero and Instagram and TikTok is not going to embarrass me by being super loud. That simple automation, again, a lot of people immediately found value, something I see, I use every day. This, that, okay, that to me is such a perfect example of, I'm realizing maybe my issue is not with shortcuts specifically, it's that Apple thinks that because shortcuts exist, it cannot make a better phone. That like the thing where I'm listening to audio and thus the audio shouldn't play or it should avoid blowing out my ears because I don't have any headphones.

1:07:58Like you should not have to be sit there and think what is every possible version of my audio situation when I open Instagram and how can I mitigate that every time I open the app? This is a thing your device should be able to do for you. And like to me, the idea that we we are all expected to like the Apple Notes team owes you money like they just do because Because like Apple Notes gets to not ship features because you're figuring out how to ship features into Apple Notes with shortcuts. And that is like to ask people to do this kind of work to solve for the fact that your phone doesn't work properly.

1:08:35I think just in principle drives me crazy. I mean, to say it doesn't work properly, that's extrapolating that every use case that someone might have, aside from saving a recipe or logging their flight because they're a pilot. You know, you can't expect every feature, every scenario to be built into a stock app. But frankly, I'm glad that it's not because now I can build shortcuts for it. So I totally get it. But also like the volume thing, you know, if you raise the volume on your phone, it's not going to lower it for you just because you opened an app. You know, it might be TikTok, YouTube, it might be Instagram.

1:09:05And so, you know, that's a preference. Not everybody wants the volume to go to zero if they open Instagram, but I do. And so for the people that do have that preference, like you can build a shortcut for it. I don't know. Now, Apple in particular is just such a hand-holding company that is like, we know best about everything. Except when it comes to all of this, when they're like, do whatever you want. It's just going to take 68 steps in a shortcuts app. It's not even that many steps. But again, to Apple Intelligence credit, well, a lot of times in the use models action for shortcuts, I use ChatGPT in that action.

1:09:37It works better than the ChatGPT shortcuts action, like from the ChatGPT app. It just doesn't error out as much. but private cloud compute and the local model for apple intelligence it can't digest a lot of text so if i give it like a podcast transcript it'll just error out it doesn't on the mac so like there's some difference there that i'm not exactly sure what's behind the scenes but i can use the chat gpt extension and hopefully apple actually builds in maybe gemini it's been rumored that that'll be part of an apple intelligence extension maybe claude if they integrate those like they have an x code you can use claude directly in x code i think it's going to make shortcuts even more powerful and you're not dependent on Apple.

1:10:14You can use these other models. What does the next step for this feel like to you? Like, is there a ceiling for what you've been able to do in shortcuts that you're hoping gets taken away at some point? You know, I'm always looking for more actions from Apple, especially like in their first party apps. A lot of people ask me for automations like, can it automatically delete mail, like emails that, you know, fit a certain criteria? There's no actions for deleting email or things like that. So new actions are always great. Also, again, love the shortcuts team. You guys are wonderful. The syncing and some of the bugginess in like that, especially if we have a large library like I do, that could be better.

1:10:49And I think people would depend on it and use it more when they can trust it. And I have lots of shortcuts that I trust on my Mac because they run every time, 95 % of the time, and they are that useful to me. And so I think if it could get a little more reliable, more actions for first party apps and even things like, again, I have to use Toolbox Pro for an action that knows if audio is playing. Like obviously my iPhone knows. And so it would be nice if you could do that. So more first party integrations, better automation triggers and more of those. And yeah, I'd be happy. Okay. And do you think there is a version of shortcuts that is more sort of straightforwardly user friendly for people to do?

1:11:28I think what I'm asking for might be impossible, which is something that is just as powerful as you're describing, because I think the power is the thing, but that is much more straightforward to do that. Like I should be able to just say to Siri or ChatGPT or whoever, like I want it such that when this happens, this happens and it just spits out the answer and the shortcut. And as far as I know, that doesn't exist. And so not only do I have to know what I want, I have to be able to do it so sequentially and in such small steps that I can figure it out. Is there a middle ground here that exists or am I wishing for something that's impossible?

1:12:06You know, I think that's like pie in the sky promise of Apple intelligence and the voice assistant on iPhone. You should totally be able to tell it when I open the photos app, unlock orientation. Like I just be able to tell my phone that and just creates that automation automatically and then I can adjust it manually if possible. That's the dream. That's the dream. And maybe one day, which maybe I'll have less of a job then, so hopefully not too soon. But I think that would be ideal. And there'll always be a place for more advanced shortcuts. But to Apple's credit, they have been adjusting some of the actions to be more user-friendly, like the if action, which is something if you get into advanced shortcuts or even medium advanced, you're going to use the if action a lot.

1:12:41You used to not be able to have multiple conditionals, like if the time is 8 a.m. and is focus mode enabled. You couldn't do that until like iOS 18. So they are tweaking some of them so you can have less actions in a shortcut and still accomplish what you want. Magic variables, which came out a few years ago, makes that easier. But I do think it's pretty close to the line of being extremely powerful and useful, but obfuscating that complexity. I'm very into the idea of like personalized software. I think vibe coding is really powerful for that. I think shortcuts can be really powerful for that.

1:13:15I think the idea of like, I can use AI tools to make the thing that I need, even though I'm the only one who needs this specific thing this specific way. I think that's very powerful. I just want it to be easier for everybody. This is this is the thing I keep landing on. And maybe the thing that I'm actually wanting is a an even bigger, broader, cooler, more discoverable ecosystem of the stuff that people like you have built. and like maybe what Apple needs to do is just replace the whole gallery with like cool stuff made by Stephen and his community. Like maybe that should just be the thing and there's something really powerful there.

1:13:47But I think, I don't know, I'm torn between this should be easier for everybody to do and maybe it's okay that it is like the app store and what we need is a better way to go find things that other people already did. I think the latter. You know, apps are complicated to build. I discovered that trying to vibe code, but that doesn't mean apps shouldn't exist. In the same way, shortcuts, they can be as easy for anyone to build and they can be super complicated, but that makes them powerful. And there can be a bunch of people that build them and you can access them like through communities like mine or whatever.

1:14:15But yeah, maybe Apple can highlight shortcuts like that, Surface useful stuff, or, you know, just go to my YouTube channel. There's like 60 videos there. You can watch those. There you go. It's a good plug to end on. All right. I like shortcuts more than I did at the beginning of this, which I hate. And so we're going to stop doing this because this is becoming a real problem for me. We're going to take a break. Steven, thank you for being there. This is really fun. Thanks for having me, Dave. All right, we got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back and do a question on the VertiCast hotline.

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1:17:39All right, we're back. Let's do a question on the VergeCast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecastattheverge.com. I'm davidpierce.11 on Signal. You can email me, davidattheverge.com. Like, just send all your questions. So we want to hear everything you're thinking about, all of your feelings. Hit us up. This time, we have a question that I want to answer in a slightly different way because I actually need your help to get this right. It's a question from Sean. Here it is. Hey, BirdChast crew. This is Sean calling in with a question that's been building for years, literally since the first AirPods were dropped in 2016.

1:18:15So here's the deal. I've never actually bought a pair of wireless earbuds. I've just coasted on whatever mediocre pair landed in my lap. I had a pair of Powerbeats 3 that crumbled literally from UV and sweat. Galaxy Buds that took a spin in the washing machine that I got on a trade-in promotion. And now I have a newer pair of AirPods Pro that I treat like royalty because they were a holiday gift. But now I'm out of options. The gadget drawer is empty. The Galaxy Buds are toast. and the AirPods Pro are my nice earbuds for work calls, flights, and pretending I have my life together. So for the first time ever, I'm about to spend my own money on wireless earbuds, and I need your help.

1:19:03I'm looking for something that's certifiably good enough. Decent sound for listening to the Vergecast while mowing the lawn, noise cancellation that can handle the drone of a mower and battery lights that last between hydration breaks. Read beer. My budget is around $120, ideally less. There's an endless sea of mid-tier earbuds on Amazon, and I'm drama. What are your picks for the best good enough wireless earbuds in 2025? Please help me make my first real purchase count. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate you taking my call and look forward to here in front now. Bye. Okay. I have a bunch of thoughts on this, but I also want help because one of the things that is true, and this is kind of my first thought on the subject, is that actually good enough headphones are incredibly easy to come by at this point.

1:19:57That if you look at basically any brand on Amazon with like pretty good reviews for 80 bucks, it's probably going to hit those benchmarks. Decent battery life, decent noise cancellation, good enough sound to listen to a podcast and not want to tear your ears off your head. That's actually a really easy set of goals to accomplish. And you can do that for well under$100. So the problem with that setup is that there are a million billion brands and product names that are all kind of roughly the same thing, because the big change that has happened here is the sort of alphabet soup brands largely just coming directly out of factories in China.

1:20:38Those headphones have gotten to the point where they are plenty good enough to hit this bar, but there's no useful way to differentiate them from one another. So if you go to the Wirecutters reviews, their best recommendation for a pair of headphones under$100 is a brand called EarFun, which is just a truly hilarious name. I got a pair of headphones off the TikTok shop from a brand called Pickun or Pickoon. I don't know how everybody pronounces it. Everybody says it differently. They were$35 for over-the-ear headphones on TikTok, they're fine, right? Like there's nothing good or exciting about them.

1:21:13And they have a lot of weird features, but like good battery life, decent noise cancellation, good enough sound quality, like across the board, you can just get that. So if you are a person listening to or watching this, who has bought a pair of these headphones and likes them, tell me what they are, whatever weird brand you bought on a whim on Amazon or found on Alibaba or bought on the TikTok shop. If you just like, sort of close your eyes and threw a dart at a pair of headphones and they happen to be pretty good, I want to hear about it because I think having a list of the ones that we can vouch for in that sea of stuff is very helpful.

1:21:46One brand I will shout out is this brand called Soundcore, which is made by Anker, the company that makes all the like charging stuff and batteries and power banks and whatever. They have a brand of headphones called Soundcore that is pretty cheap and generally pretty good. People seem to like it. They have solid reviews. They make a bunch of different kinds. So I think if I were to just send you one place, Soundcore is probably where I would send you to feel pretty solid about product quality at a pretty good price. So that's one approach. But I think what I would actually tell you to do is try to get a more expensive pair of headphones at this price.

1:22:19Headphones go on sale constantly. And you can either do something like wait for the Pixel Buds 2a to get a little cheaper or the Pixel Buds Pro 2 to get a lot cheaper. I saw a sale on the Pixel Buds Pro where they're like 160 bucks. So like they're, they're almost in your range already. And that stuff will get cheaper over time. Another way to do it is to get last generation headphones, like you can get Sony's very good over ear headphones for pretty cheap, if you're willing to go back a couple of generations. There's also a pretty hefty used market for that stuff. But if I'm being completely honest, used headphones kind of freaked me out.

1:22:56So do with that what you will. But I think in general, like being opportunistic about buying good headphones is pretty doable. If you're willing to like wait and sale shop a little like it's late October now. By the time we get to Black Friday, there are going to be like huge screaming sales on some of these headphones that I suspect will get a pair of headphones that is currently way out of your price range into your price range. I think you own an iPhone. Sean didn't say but I think based on you know, the Powerbeats and the AirPods Pro, like I think you probably own an iPhone. What I would say is the current AirPods, like not the AirPods Pro, but the base level AirPods are terrific and would hit all of your metrics except the lawn mowing noise cancellation.

1:23:45That might actually be the hardest part of this is not just regular noise cancellation, but you're going to be standing two feet away from a pretty loud motor. I would say, A, if you can get a pair of over-ear headphones, which again, you can find on Amazon and elsewhere for pretty cheap. But B, that's a reason to spend as much money as you can stomach on this stuff. The noise cancellation, you do kind of get what you pay for. I think sound quality and battery life plateau way before noise cancellation quality does. So that's the thing to spend the money on. But again, sale shopping and buy a couple of generations ago, like all of the mid-range Sony over-ear headphones from three years ago are still great headphones.

1:24:29They're not the best ones anymore, but for the price that you're trying to spend, they'll be excellent. So you can shop around and find stuff that way, and I think you'll do really well. But the truest thing I can say here, and the thing I actually feel in my heart, is you should just stop babying your AirPods Pro and use them for everything. They're pretty resilient. The AirPods Pro in particular have gotten better at things like moisture control and doing noise cancellation and like they hit all of your bars. And my experience has certainly been that they will either die because of their battery or I will lose them or run them through the dryer, which is a thing I did once before they fall apart because I've like overused them, right?

1:25:10Like these are pretty durable headphones and I would just use those. You already have an awesome pair of headphones. Just be psyched about it. Put the$120 you have saved away for a rainy day when these break and you need to buy a replacement or upgrade the case or whatever. You have an awesome pair of headphones. Use your awesome pair of headphones. So that's my advice. But truly, if you are a person out there who like on a whim bought a$60 pair of headphones on Amazon or a$19 pair of headphones on Timu, or you found something on the TikTok shop that you like way more than you expected. I want to know about it.

1:25:46I want to have a list of like those alphabet soup hexadecimal names that we can be like, these are good headphones. Vergecast people say so. So get at me 866-VERGE11, vergecastatheverge.com. Sean, I will follow up with more recommendations as soon as we get them. Until then, though, that is it for the show. Thank you to Steven and V for being here. And thank you, as always, for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, if you have more version history feedback, by the way, we're almost halfway through this first run of shows. And if you have ideas and things you want us to make shows about, or you have different ideas for the version history questions, or you have an actual idea about what the version history Hall of Fame is supposed to be, get at us.

1:26:27We'd love to hear it. 866-VERGE-11 is the hotline. Vergecast at theverge.com is the email. Keep it all coming. We love hearing it. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. It's Vergecast It's a Verge production, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I will be back with Neelai on Friday. It's still very exciting to say that. Talking about all the news, all the gadgets, all the everything. I think we're like slowly winding towards the end of gadget season. But I've said that before, and I've been wrong. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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