Apple Intelligence lets users build workflows using AI in iOS 27 Shortcuts app redesign

Apple will let you build workflows using AI in its new Shortcuts app

Apple has leveraged AI to make its visual-scripting tool, Shortcuts, easier to use in iOS 27. The Shortcuts app was largely built for power users who wanted to automate repetitive tasks, create workflows, or set up multi-app actions. The new version of Shortcuts will instead allow users to write a prompt and simply describe what they want to do. The new feature is powered by Apple Intelligence, which helps to determine what a natural language description means so it can build out the required steps. "While super powerful, the process of creating these shortcuts can feel, well, complicated," admitted Celcia Dantas, Sr. Manager of Home Software Product Marketing during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday. The AI update makes the Shortcuts app more approachable and expands what non-technical people can do, as they'll no longer need to worry about finding the right app actions or variables. Dantas also offered an example of how this feature could be put to real-world use, suggesting that users could design a shortcut that would automatically notify their partner when they leave work and give them an expected ETA for their arrival at home. Instead of having to figure out how to build this type of automation, users could just type in a request, and Shortcuts would then pull together whatever system and app actions are needed. In this case, it would create an automation that runs the shortcut once the users leaves work -- accessing a stored address -- then calculates their ETA using Apple Maps, and sends the alert via Messages. Users can also make edits or changes by describing them, Apple notes. In the "leaving work" example, for instance, the user could edit it after the fact to start playing a favorite podcast, for instance. The updated version of Shortcuts will roll out with iOS 27 later this fall.

iOS 27's Shortcuts upgrade makes automations easy to build - and will save me so much time

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Apple's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) is taking place this week, and on Day 1, the tech giant announced new software updates for iOS 27, including Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, better photo editing, faster performance, and more. But as a longtime iPhone user, the one feature that stood out to me during Monday's keynote was the ability to describe a Shortcut to Apple Intelligence to automate your daily tasks. Also: iOS 27 is here: How to download the developer beta now Apple's Shortcut app is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated apps in the Apple ecosystem. While it already has a built-in automation tool that creates custom commands and actions across hundreds of apps, my one big quibble with the Shortcuts app is how complicated it is to actually create a Shortcut. It took me a long time to figure out how, and making a new one still takes me about 10-15 minutes. However, now in iOS 27, you'll be able to use Apple Intelligence to assemble a Shortcut for you based on your description of what you want it to do. In Apple's example, a user wanted to let their partner know what time they'll get home each day when they leave work. The user described the main goal of the Shortcut, and Apple Intelligence automatically created a Shortcut that uses GPS to see when they leave work, calculate their ETA to home using Maps, and sends a text through Messages to their partner. Also: Apple just announced iOS 27, and here's which iPhones support it How might I apply this to my own life? I could ask Apple Intelligence to automatically play my workout playlist on Spotify when I hit the "start" button to record a workout in my Oura app. Or, my mom could finally utilize the Shortcuts app to solve the problem of her always misplacing her phone in her house (like mother, like daughter), by telling Apple Intelligence to turn her phone's volume to 100% and play a loud song when someone texts her "#findphone". There really are endless ways to use the Shortcuts app, but I won't have to take the 10 minutes or so to manually create a Shortcut, and can forgo that by asking Apple Intelligence instead. This upgrade should also make the handy app more accessible to those who are less tech-savvy and haven't had the chance (or patience) to check out its useful features. Other notable Apple Intelligence upgrades coming to iOS 27 include Messages and Mail offering suggestions to help you take quick actions based on context from your conversation, better Safari tab grouping, and the ability to create higher-quality images in Image Playground. All of these updates are available on iOS 27 now through the developer beta, with the public beta coming in July. General users will get to experience these upgrades this fall (usually in September) when iOS 27 is officially released.

Apple Will Soon Let You Use AI to More Easily Create Automation Routines

The Shortcuts app is Apple's hub for all kinds of automation on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It allows you to create automation routines based on simple triggers, such as turning on the lights when you're near home at the end of your work day. While the Shortcuts app is incredibly powerful, it's always been a bit difficult to create shortcuts. If you're not technically inclined, it's not easy to learn how triggers work, why a particular step is breaking your automation, and so on. Apple is changing all of that with iOS 27, which is scheduled for release this Fall. Apple will soon allow you to use Apple Intelligence, the company's spin on AI, to create shortcuts with simple text prompts. This means that you could ask Apple Intelligence to create a shortcut with a prompt as simple as: "Message my ETA to my partner when I'm leaving work." That will create a shortcut for you, and you can ask the app to run this every weekday. This makes Shortcuts much more accessible to people who find it intimidating to create multi-step automation workflows. You'll still have to check if the shortcut works correctly, adjust your prompts to fix errors, and go through a few iterations before the perfect automation is ready. This, however, is a lot easier than manually creating your own shortcuts. To be honest, even I resist creating many shortcuts and automations because of the time it requires. I'd rather search the internet for great shortcuts created by the community, but with this upcoming Apple Intelligence integration, I'm looking forward to whipping up many more of my own shortcuts. The catch is that this feature will only work with devices that support Apple Intelligence, which means that you'll need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer device to get this feature. Those of us with older devices won't be able to use new Apple Intelligence features.