Siri Shortcuts
Siri Shortcuts is an iOS app that lets you assemble sequences of actions across other apps on your phone that Siri can run for you. You can employ programming functions like if/else, repeating loops, and variables. You can give Siri text to read and let Siri understand your speech.
I like coming up with new Shortcuts and putting them together – it’s like a game where the goal is to design an easy and valuable user experience to make your own life easier. These are some of the Siri Shortcuts I made and use often.
If you have an iPhone on iOS 13 with Siri Shortcuts installed, you can try these right now, but you must be on your phone to download them. Each post has instructions for how to get started.
Islands - Everything Is Under Control
This nightmare Might scare some of you And truth be told These dreams are coming true But Everything is under control Don't climb out From under your hole
OpenWill The Moon Explode?
"There's a message from the moon base, something strange is going on/ all the scientists are working overtime to find what's wrong... Will the moon explode? .... I don't know if I believe......that the moon will explode."
OpenCells at Work
No better time to visualize how powerful and deadly your powerful white blood cells are.
OpenOn Becoming A God In Central Florida
This is a brilliant show. Exciting. Funny. Well-acted. Well-written. Perfect show.
OpenHis Girl Friday
This is a good summary of one of my favorite movies. I named my cat Hildy after Hildy.
OpenWill The Moon Explode? by The 23rd Century
"There's a message from the moon base, something strange is going on/ all the scientists are working overtime to find what's wrong... Will the moon explode? .... I don't know if I believe......that the moon will explode."
OpenPaul McCartney's "Blackbird" sung in Mi'kmaq
To bring awareness to this important cause students at Allison Bernard Memorial High School in Eskasoni, Cape Breton recorded Paul McCartney's Blackbird in their native Mi'kmaq language.
OpenCast of Hadestown performing "Wait for Me" on TV
I saw this show on Broadway and loved it a lot. This is a really lovely rendition of this song.
Open"My Brother My Brother and Me" Celebrity Voicemail Impressions
One of my favorite podcasts. Funny as heck.
OpenCollecting every item in Untitled Goose Game
Oh yes, I had Untitled Goose Game fever the same weekend as everyone else.
OpenZoobilee Zoo
It's as close as a dream, and as bright as the brightest blue: Welcome to Zoobilee Zoo
OpenAlphaquest
Doorways up and down the halls, wonder what's behind them all! Doors that lead to anywhere, got to A-B-C what's there, Got to A-B-C-Decide, where's the door I haven't tried? A-B-C-D-East to west, going on an Alphaquest!
OpenOpening theme of the show "Cells at Work"
I watched this show on Netflix recently and really enjoyed it. The theme song is pretty catchy and fun.
OpenThat song about Corona Virus from Vietnam
You may have seen this on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight - he is right, I can confirm that the song does slap.
OpenA Talking Cat? By Louie Zong and the podcast "My Brother, My Brother, and Me"
A short funny story about a talking cat who wants to go to college.
OpenLadies of the cast of Hamilton singing "I'm not throwing away my shot"
If you like Hamilton this is pretty fun.
OpenQuick Calendar Entry for Online Event
Now that there are a lot of online events bubbling up, I decided to make a shortcut to quickly add them to my phone's calendar. Just run this shortcut out of the "Share" menu when you see an event you'd like to attend and the shortcut will do the rest.
Continue reading →Shortcuts to run with your wakeup alarm
You can schedule shortcuts to run automatically whenever your phone detects certain things. These are some shortcuts that I set up to run whenever my wakeup alarm goes off in the morning.
Continue reading →Get Youtube Karaoke Version
This shortcut does a search on Youtube for a karaoke version of a song you choose.
Continue reading →Tara's Suggestion Roulette
Bored? Want a fun video, nice song, or other interesting thing to consume? When you run this shortcut, you'll get a random thing I have chosen.
Continue reading →Get Karaoke Version
Have you ever been listening to a song on your phone and thought, I wonder if there's a karaoke version of this? This shortcut searches the iTunes store for karaoke versions of music. You can choose if you want it to search using the current song, or a specific song, or pick a random song from your music library.
Continue reading →Easy Calendar Updater
I always forget to add things to my phone's calendar. This shortcut is designed to make it a quick and easy process by eliminating some of the pointless steps and smoothing out the tedious steps.
Continue reading →Alarms for being on time
How to be at a certain place at a certain time: 1. Remember what date, time, and location the place is, and continue remembering for days. 2. On that day, get the address, plug it into Google Maps and find out how long it will take to get there. Subtract the ETA from the time you want to be there. 3. Decide that you want to leave about 20 minutes early to make a stop along the way. Subtract 20 minutes from the time you want to be there subtracted from the ETA. 4. You will need to remember to warn yourself to start getting ready beforehand, so subtract another 10 minutes. Keep all 4 of these numbers in your head at the same time. OR download this shortcut and let your phone do all of this for you.
Continue reading →Record Audio and Email the Share Links
In times when it's safe and legal to do so, this pair of shortcuts helps you record audio and share it quickly and easily. The first shortcut records the audio and the second shortcut gets and emails share links to the files.
Continue reading →Selfie Helper
This shortcut automates flipping your selfie horizontally so you can see yourself like other people see you.
Continue reading →Quickly Markup a Photo
This is a shortcut that makes it faster & easier to add some markup to a photo like text or drawing, then send it out. Have a great idea for a meme, but know that if it takes too long to produce it won't be as funny? Now your troubles are over!
Continue reading →Reset Bluetooth
This is a simple shortcut that turns your phone's Bluetooth setting off and on.
Continue reading →Get and send your ETA
These are shortcuts that send your ETA to the person of your choice, whether you're heading home or somewhere else.
Continue reading →One-touch Music Starters
These are two shortcuts that automatically start the music of your choice playing on your phone. One of them starts a playlist you specify and the other one automatically creates the playlist for you based on parameters you specify.
Continue reading →Airport Alarms
On a day when you're heading to the airport, in order to get yourself to the place where they let you on the plane at the right time, you need to remember & find out several different numbers and plug them into several formulas. This shortcut teaches Siri how to do all the math, create alarms for the right times on your phone, and email your schedule to yourself so you can reference it later. I made this shortcut to save myself from doing all of this math and it works great!
Continue reading →Send me feedback inside a shortcut
This is a simple shortcut that opens up a link to my web page's message form. Run this when you're using a shortcut and want to let me know about a bug or tell me how much it's changed your life, or just send me any message.
Continue reading →Record Receipts
These shortcuts make it quick and easy to log work receipts by snapping a photo and emailing it to pre-set addresses.
Continue reading →Menu Scheduler
I have been trying to get into cooking lately but I have encountered a few challenges. The first one was knowing what to buy at the grocery store. The second one was then remembering what I should cook every day. The first problem I have mostly solved using another app called Paprika 3. The second challenge I am trying to solve with this shortcut. This shortcut lets me set a reminder to cook a certain thing for the day that I plan to cook it. I run this shortcut while I'm shopping at the grocery store and then it reminds me days later about what I planned for that day. I'm still experimenting with the concept but I think it's working OK so far.
Continue reading →Alarm Setters
These are shortcuts for setting different types of alarms. I'm not that good with doing math in my head, so I made these to let me skip having to do math when setting alarms. One is for setting multiple alarms with the same interval apart, and the other one is for setting an alarm for a certain interval of time from now.
Continue reading →Flag for Follow Up
When driving, sometimes a song comes on and I'd like to remember to make a change to it in iTunes when I get home. This shortcut lets Siri ask you why you're flagging it, then it sends that to your own email so you can deal with it later.
Continue reading →Nearest Non-embedded Starbucks
I like the food they serve at Starbucks more than regular fast food, so often when I’m out I will want to know where the nearest non-embedded Starbucks is. If I do a regular search in Google Maps, it will send me to a Starbucks inside a grocery store which doesn’t always serve the same foods. This shortcut uses the Starbucks website’s store locator pre-set to find that type of location and helps you get directions quickly.
Continue reading →Balance Tracker and Balance Subtractor
This is a pair of shortcuts that help you keep a running balance. Both shortcuts work together, but you don’t need both for the other to function. The purpose of these functions is to just help you track how much money is left in your balance, and doesn’t ask you what you spent the money on or anything like that.
Continue reading →List to Checklist
ToDoist is a checklist app that I like to use. This is a pretty simple shortcut that takes a list you have in your notes app of choice and creates a ToDoist checklist item for each list item. This is good for things like groceries or packing where it’s more or less the same set of things every time but you want them in checklist form so you can check them off. You can always add things to the list but this saves you the hassle of having to remember everything that should be on there.
Continue reading →WhatsApp Buddy
If you use an iPhone but you text with someone on Android, you’re probably going to want to use WhatsApp for that to make sure no texts are getting lost in the Android/iPhone No Mans Land. And if you’re using WhatsApp to text, you know that sending something to someone using the Share menu* takes several steps:
Continue reading →