Apple Shortcuts makes it easy to create workflows using visual coding blocks on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. While this feature still lacks the power of Automator or AppleScript, it’s still pretty useful. Below are some sample workflows that you can use on macOS and edit and duplicate to create your own workflow.

How to Add and Trigger Mac Shortcuts

The shortcuts linked below will launch in the macOS Shortcuts app when you click on them. You can then add them to your Mac with one click. Some were created by users in communities such as: r/Shortcuts on Reddit and RoutineHubothers were created or modified by How-To Geek writers.

Many of these are triggered Shortcuts menu bar itemothers appear in the right-click Quick Actions menu. You can also trigger them directly from the Shortcuts app if you want; Here you can edit existing shortcuts, add more from the Gallery, or delete workflows you no longer need.

Low Power Mode On and Low Power Mode Off

Reddit user u/MrVegetableMan created shortcuts to switch Low Power Mode On And Low Power Mode Off It works using a shell script. For this to work, you need to enable the “Allow Scripts to Run” option under Shortcuts > Preferences > Advanced and grant root access on first run. Once you’re done, you’ll be able to enable these shortcuts from the menu bar.

You can check your current status by clicking on the battery charge indicator, which will tell you whether Low Power Mode is enabled or not. You can enable Low Power Mode manually, but this requires many more clicks than using a simple menu bar shortcut. Learn more about what Low Power Mode does and which models are supported.

Simple Time Tracking

Want to keep track of how much time you spend on a project? Simple Time Tracking The shortcut allows you to save multiple events in one folder. Text note in Apple’s Notes app. For best results, you need to edit the workflow by first adding it, then double-clicking on it to edit.

Under “List” you’ll see items like “One” and “Two”, which you can change to activities like “Research” or “Reading” to suit what you’re watching (add as many as you like). The shortcut will create a note named “Time Log Shortcut Data”, but if you prefer to save to a differently named note, change it under the “Find All Notes” and “Create Note With” actions to match your own name. scheme.

Finally, you can change the layout of the log data under “Text” at the bottom of the workflow. You can run the workflow from your menu bar shortcut, and each time you run it it will ask you when you started, how long you spent on the task, and if you have any notes you want to save. Each journal will be added to the same note, so they are all in the same place.

Change Desktop Icons

It’s nice to have a clean desktop with no icons visible, but this is also a bit impractical as the desktop is a convenient place to offload files, access and store mounted disk images. screenshots.

Now you can quickly turn desktop icons on and off. Change Desktop Icons shortcut by user @NCC-1701-A on RoutineHub. Easily accessible via menu barbut you need to enable the “Allow Scripts to Run” option under Shortcuts > Preferences > Advanced.

Quit All Apps

If you’re a stickler for shutting down apps before closing them Restart or put your Mac to sleepClosing each one individually can be a pain. Use: Quit All Apps use a shortcut to bomb the party or consider editing to add an exception.

If it’s something you do often, you can turn it into a “Quit All But Safari” shortcut (or an app of your choice).

Quit All Apps Except These

The above shortcut may be a bit much for many situations. If you’re someone who finds you have a lot of apps open that you forget to close but you’re still working on something, use this shortcut to quickly clean up your Mac desktop.

This one comes courtesy of How-To Geek writer Kipp Burroughs. It requires you to first download a free app called. Actions From App Store. Then you can follow Kipp’s guide to set the shortcut So, every time you run the app, you’ll be asked to uncheck apps you no longer need to open to close them all at once.

Count Characters and Words

Highlighted by Alexander Kassner. X (Twitter)This simple shortcut can be triggered from the right-click “Services” menu in almost any application (including Safari). Highlight the text you want to count and select Services > Count Characters (or Count Words) to see the result.

Even though the original shortcut was designed like this: Count Characterswe copied it and modified it slightly to create a shortcut Count Words in its place.

Force Mac Apps to Open Minimized

This is less of a workflow you run and more of an automation that uses Shortcuts to execute a script that you can trigger at login. This is another creation by How-To Geek writer Kipp Burroughs, and it requires a bit of setup. The good news is that you can use this opportunity to set it exactly the way you want it, so that the launch of your favorite applications is minimized every time you log in.

Read Kipp’s article to complete the installation processThis involves enabling the “Allow Scripts to Run” option and creating an application list before changing the login settings using the Mac Terminal and the nano text editor.

Open Ready-to-Run Applications and Documents

If you don’t like the idea of ​​the same apps launching every time you start your Mac but still need to quickly enable run mode, try this shortcut idea from How-To Geek writer Dan Helyer. Follow the guide to add all business apps and documents to a shortcutthen launch the shortcut with one click to open everything at once.

If this works great assign your applications to specific desktops so everything pops up in the right place.

Adding Automation to macOS Shortcuts with Shortery

Free macOS app Brevity It allows you to take macOS Shortcuts to another level. You can use this app to automate most of your workflows and you can add 17 triggers to run shortcuts:

Although Shortery is free, you’ll need to upgrade to Shortery Pro ($9.99, in-app purchase) to get the full feature set.

Use shortcuts on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch too

Shortcuts are a universal part of the Apple ecosystem. There’s a great selection in the shortcut gallery to help you get started with custom workflows that offer full range of possibilities benefits such as increased productivitymassively Expand iPhone’s Action Button repertoireor do something like this Save health data with two taps.

Using the same app create useful automations ones that are triggered when you do things like open apps, connect Bluetooth devices, or charge your iPhone.