My MUST have Shortcuts Automations: What’s on my iPad

shortcuts is the key to my ability to work from the iPad these are automations that bridge the gaps between apps and the OS this video is sponsored by make let's get into it shortcuts are block-based automations I did a beginner guide to shortcuts already I'm going to link that in the description below so if you're not exactly sure how to make them or you feel lost you can go check that out also link all of the shortcuts that I'm going to mention in this video in the description below as well Now shortcuts can be used for all sorts of things converting data moving stuff from one app to another pulling stuff from the web and just more capture cut is one of my most used shortcuts the purpose of this is for me to be able to write a note quickly and then save it to obsidian in my quick note folder now this is pretty straightforward normally you just write a note in the shortcut but if you have a safari Page open it's going to attach the link to whatever page is open in the note and format in a markdown Style this way I can quickly save something I'm looking at or want to research later or maybe want to buy or whatever I run the shortcut all the time for quickly saving notes stuff I want to follow up on notes from a meeting things I want to get out of my head Etc Launchpad quickly opens my Launchpad document this uses the app actions for obsidian now what this app does is it adds a bunch of native obsidian actions to shortcuts so the obsidian app by default actually has no shortcut actions but this will go through and add a bunch automatically it makes it really nice for shortcuts like this that you want to open something or maybe a pend or prepend something so that way you're not having to mess with like regular Expressions when it comes to uh attaching stuff to documents Launchpad is a document I mentioned in the productivity apps video of this series and it's the document I use to link to all my current projects this is something I use quite a bit so it's really nice to be able to just write run this and open that document from anywhere in the OS markdown to PDF takes plain text documents and turns them into PDF documents something I do quite frequently I use this for turning my scripts from obsidian into PDFs and then moving them into good notes I run this right from obsidian in the share sheet it formats the document and then we'll save it into goodnotes I can then Mark up the PDF or treat it as a shot list Rich text to converter is a shortcut I use to convert plain text into rich text I mostly use this for emails this takes whatever's on your clipboard converts it from markdown into Rich Text so bold italics link bullets whatever now it does have a separate option in here for making specific markdown links for Rich text but as of iPad OS 17 you could do this automatically in the mail app I'm going to leave this in here because I'm sure it'll probably benefit people but I don't use it so much anymore because now in mail you can highlight text right click on it and hit add link and then just paste the link it'll make a rich text link right there in your compose window like I mentioned in my productivity apps video I use the app drafts it's a really powerful text editor and it has support for external linking generate links to drafts lets you search for a note in drafts and then we'll get the link to that draft it'll format it so that way you can paste it anywhere in my case I often do it in a obsidian but you could put it in things like well the app things your task manager spreadsheets whatever and then you can just tap on those links it it'll launch right into that note in drafts a nice way to jump into a specific note from an external app task cut is probably one of my most used shortcuts this takes advantage of the quick entry action in things this will first look to see if there is any Safari Page open just like capture cut works it will then open the quick entry field in things and it will add that link that was open to the notes field it then looks to see if it's running on your Apple watch the Apple watch doesn't support the quick entry option so it needs the more manual method if none of the criteria match those options it just opens the quick entry window here I can quickly fill out the task adding project date subtask any information and then add it right into things this is how I add tasks into things I rarely open the app app and just manually type out a an action I usually run this shortcut it's a really handy tool for creating the task just from anywhere in the OS like oh hey I need to do this thing on Monday or oh hey let's go pick this thing up blah blah blah you can just do it from anywhere this video is sponsored by make make is shortcuts but for web and background automations with make you can automate tasks for your work or business to really stream line everything I'm a single business person but with make I can have an automated assistant taking care of tasks for me in the background so I can focus on what is important this way you don't have to waste your time worrying about the Small Things task it done the right way consistently every single time something I love about make is you don't need a computer always running it's web based it's server side so it's running in the background with make you can connect to over 1,400 apps and services this includes the Google productivity Suite notion Trello todoist chat GPT WordPress and more with make I am able to automate my business so I'm spending less time doing busy work and more time being creative for example I was able to streamline how I handle publishing my content on launch day I started off by using the watch RSS action I then pasted the RSS feed for my YouTube channel in here then make watches that RSS feed and when a new video pops up it formats that new video into a mastedon post using the name and the URL of the video You could also use make to post to other places like Facebook Instagram and more I could also go another direction to and use this to build out a fullblown post for a WordPress blog as well really streamlining a posting process for something like new content or a PR post after I created the post I set it up so that make creates a reminder for me in 7even days to check the video analytics I did this with the Google Calendar integration select create event I set the event name using another variable from the RSS action so I know exactly what video it's for for the date option I set it to be all day I then went into the start date and used the built-in time and date function with make I started with the add days function made the starting point now and then added seven days to the event so that way it knows to create an event seven days from the point that this runs it will then create an event to check the analytics for my new video at no point do I have to intervene or do any manual task with make I could take this even further because it has chat GPT integration built right into it now there's a couple of different ways you could use this you could use this to generate an image so that you could have the hero image for your blog post right there nice AI generated image you didn't have to go take a photo or make something or whatever you can just put it right there or and this is my personal favorite you can use it to transcribe the audio from the video and turn it into subtitles or a blog post to make your video more accessible if you're not sure where to get started with make they have a ton of awesome templates built in there are some for hooking Google calendar events to Trello creating MailChimp subscribers from Google Sheets automatically backup email attachments to an FTP server and so many more there is a lot you can do with make and I encourage everyone to go check it out it's really impressive make has a few different plans but I highly encourage you to check out the Pro Plan it's the best bang for your buck this gets you custom variables scenario inputs full text execution Log search priority scenario execution plus everything else from the former plans use my link in the description below to sign up for the Pro Plan and you get one month for free my thanks to make for sponsoring this video I have probably had hundreds of iterations of my new video project shortcuts this is one of those ones I've been using for a very long time but I've constantly been tweaking it this builds out an entire project in things and will put all of the tasks that I do for a video as a template it's very specific to me but you can modif ify the template to be for you and you know to match whatever kind of project you do when I run this I can pick from the different kinds of project it is and then it will add the specific task for that kind of project into it because of my ADHD this is extremely handy to me I want to make sure I have every step in there I'm following my process and I'm not trying to get ahead of myself or off the path snippet cut is a shortcut I've been using for a couple of years now uh this is my snippet manager a text snippet manager it does require using the app data jar so I use this to put all of the text Snippets I use often this could be stuff like email addresses instructions template emails links and more when you run the shortcut it gives you two options you can take whatever is on your clipboard and add it right into Data jar and that way you can pull it up later on to set this up like I mentioned you need the app data jar you need to go in and create a list called snippet board now what I use this for mostly is getting text out of data jar so when I run this shortcut I can select the get option it gives me a list of everything that is in data jar in this list I can select one and it adds it right to my clipboard and I can paste it wherever it needs to go this is really handy if you have text or Snippets or whatever that you use quite a bit convert to thumbnail is a shortcut I use for creating thumbnails for my YouTube videos but this can also be just a handy image compression short cut the way this works is it uses the resize action now you can change here what the resolution you want of the image to be I found the setting to be the long edge of the image to be 256 pixels to be a really good balance between a nice image and a low file size background audio takes a bunch of scenes that I made in data jar it'll pick a random scene and then just start playing it I like this because I don't need to sit there and manually pick something I can just run it and the computer's hand handing it for me that's automation at its best and I can just get to work but it also mixes things up so I'm not just listening to the same thing over and over again headphones is a shortcut I'm weirdly proud of sometimes when I put my airpods in they don't automatically pair to my uh iPad or if I take out my phone and I start doing something else sometimes the connection moves over and it's just it's annoying because I don't want to have to go into settings and reselect connect to my iPad and all that stuff so with headphones I just run this shortcut and they automatically force my airpods to pair with whatever device they that shortcut just ran on now speaking of running shortcuts there are two main ways I run shortcuts uh I don't use the widget anymore I don't have the shortcuts widget on my iPad which is really funny because I've been begging for the XL shortcut widget they finally added I'm like oh yeah I I'm good now sorry one of the two main ways I run shortcuts for my iPad is running them from spot light especially when I have a keyboard attached this can be done from anywhere in the OS by hitting command space and then just typing the shortcut name now there used to be a bunch of bugs with running shortcuts from Spotlight but those have all been solved with iPad OS 17 don't have any issues running shortcuts from Spotlight anymore it's just really simple to type the name of the shortcut hit enter and then you can interact with any menus or ask for inputs or list or whatever action cut is another way that I run shortcuts now I did a whole video about action cut that I'll link to I won't rehash all the details for it but the TLD drr or TLD DW would be it's a shortcut that runs other shortcuts so what I did is I took the shortcut and used the add to home screen option and then I put it in the dock I specifically put it in the doc because you can access the doc from anywhere in the OS whether you have a keyboard attached or not or if you have apps open or not you can just swipe up from the bottom if you have full screen apps open even with Stage manager this is not something that can be done with widgets from there I can just tap on action cut and it'll give me the list of shortcuts that are signed for that Focus mode that adapts to the mode I'm in it's mostly just shortcuts I use all day long it's especially really handy in tablet mode so I want to hear from you all what is your favorite shortcut doesn't need to be one of mine I would love to hear from you all if you have one that you made that's at one of your favorites my thanks to make for sponsoring this video if you like the video hit the Thumbs Up Button subscribe if you haven't already and have a great day

Channel: Christopher Lawley

Views: 28,174

Keywords: Apple, iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Pro 12.9, iPhone, iPad Productivity, Getting things done on iPad, iPadOS, iOS, App, Shortcuts, Automation, Siri, Siri Shortcuts, Automations, Workflow, Productivity, Things, Things 3, Shortcuts Setup, Homescreen, Home screen, Lock screen, Lockscreen, Automate, iOS Automation, iPadOS 17, New iPads, Drafts, Obsidian, Note taking, How To, How to make shortcuts, how to build shortcuts, make, shortcuts, shortcut, build, Apps, What’s on my iPad

Id: 91cfcOgyXng

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024