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Apple has shipped a capable automation tool with every iPhone for the better part of a decade. Most people have never opened it.
The Shortcuts app — findable via Spotlight search if it has drifted off the home screen — can automate multi-step tasks, respond to triggers such as battery level or app launches, and fill gaps that iOS itself has not addressed. What follows are ten automations that range from quietly practical to mildly ingenious, none of which require any coding knowledge.
Saving Things For Later, Properly
The share sheet — the panel that appears when you tap the upload icon in Safari, YouTube, Instagram or most other apps — is one of iOS’s more underused surfaces. A Shortcut configured to appear there can capture a link, generate a brief summary and save both directly to Apple Notes in a single tap.
To build it: open Shortcuts, tap the plus icon to create a new shortcut, add a Get Details of Safari Web Page action for the URL, then add a Make Note action pointed at Apple Notes. Name it something recognisable, then navigate to the shortcut’s settings and enable Show in Share Sheet. On first use, iOS will request permissions; selecting Always Allow means it runs without interruption thereafter.
Rotation Lock That Knows Which App You’re In
iOS allows you to lock screen orientation globally but offers no per-app control. Shortcuts does. Two linked automations can toggle rotation lock off when a chosen app opens and back on when it closes — so opening YouTube unlocks landscape automatically, and closing it restores portrait lock without any manual adjustment.
To build it: open Shortcuts, go to Automation, tap New Automation, select App, choose your app and set the trigger to Opens. Add the Set Orientation Lock action and set it to Off. Repeat the process for the same app, this time setting the trigger to Closes and the action to On.
Combining Screenshots Into One Image
Long screenshots — a single image capturing an entire webpage or conversation — are not natively supported on iPhone outside of Safari’s PDF export. Shortcuts offers a workable alternative.
Take your screenshots first, then open Shortcuts and create a new shortcut. Add a Select Photos action with Select Multiple enabled, then add a Combine Images action set to Vertically. Follow that with a Save to Photo Album action. Running the shortcut lets you select the screenshots in sequence and saves the combined result as a single image.
A Circle To Search Workaround On Older iPhones
Circle to Search — Google’s feature allowing users to highlight anything on screen and trigger a visual search — is available natively on iPhone 16 and later via Apple’s Visual Intelligence. On iPhone 15 and below, the feature does not exist, but a back-tap gesture can get reasonably close.
To set it up: go to Settings, then Accessibility, then Touch, then Back Tap. Assign either Double Tap or Triple Tap to the Visual Intelligence option if it appears in your list.
Note that Visual Intelligence itself requires iOS 18.1 or later, and on pre-iPhone 16 hardware it has limited functionality — it can identify objects and text on screen, but the experience is not identical to Circle to Search on supported devices. The Google app should be installed for search integration to work correctly.
Low Power Mode On Your Own Terms
By default, iOS activates Low Power Mode at 20 per cent battery. That threshold is fixed in the system settings but not in Shortcuts.
To build it: open Shortcuts, go to Automation, tap New Automation, then select Battery Level. Set it to Falls Below and choose your preferred threshold — 30 per cent, 40 per cent, or higher. Toggle Run Immediately on, then add a Set Low Power Mode action set to On. The automation will now run silently whenever the battery crosses that point.
Saving Recipes From Instagram Reels To Notes
Video recipes on Instagram Reels are easy to watch and nearly impossible to retrieve later. A Shortcut using AI summarisation can extract the content and save it to Apple Notes at the point of sharing.
To build it: create a new shortcut and add a Receive input from Share Sheet action, accepting URLs. Add a Get Contents of URLaction to retrieve the page. Then add a Summarise Text action — available in Shortcuts on iOS 18 — and follow it with a Create Note action in Apple Notes. Enable Show in Share Sheet in the shortcut settings.
The AI summarisation step requires iOS 18 and an iPhone with Apple Intelligence support, which begins with iPhone 15 Pro and the full iPhone 16 range.
A Spoken Battery Warning
For anyone who routinely misses low-battery notifications, a Shortcut can make the phone announce the situation out loud rather than display a silent badge.
To build it: go to Automation, create a new Battery Level automation set to Falls Below five per cent, enable Run Immediately, and add a Speak Text action. Type whatever phrase you want spoken. The phone will read it aloud when the threshold is reached, regardless of whether the screen is on.
A Timer That Starts When You Open Instagram
Screen time limits in iOS require navigating into settings and dismissing a dialogue when the limit is reached. An automation is more immediate.
To build it: go to Automation, tap New Automation, select App, choose Instagram (for example), and set the trigger to Opens. Add a Start Timer action and set the duration to ten minutes. The timer begins the moment the app opens, providing a passive prompt without additional steps. The same configuration applies to any application.
Automatic Volume Reduction For Specific Apps
If a particular application consistently plays audio louder than you want, a Shortcut can reduce the volume automatically every time you open it.
To build it: go to Automation, tap NewAutomation, select App, choose your app, and set the trigger to Opens. Enable Run Immediately, then add a Set Volume action. Select Media Volume and set it to around 20 per cent, or whatever level suits. The volume will drop each time that app launches.
A Spoken Charging Confirmation
This sits closer to novelty than necessity but illustrates how little effort it takes to make the phone respond to physical events. An automation triggered by the iPhone connecting to power will speak a chosen phrase the moment charging begins.
To build it: go to Automation, tap New Automation, select Charger, and set the trigger to Is Connected. Enable Run Immediately, add a Speak Text action, and type whatever message you want. It serves no function that the charging screen indicator does not already cover, but as demonstrations of the Shortcuts app’s range go, it requires about ninety seconds to set up.
One Worth Mentioning Separately
Telling Siri “I’m on my way home” prompts it to send a message to a contact with your estimated arrival time, drawn from Maps data in real time. No shortcut required — it is built into Siri’s natural language processing and has been for several iOS versions. It is also, in practice, almost entirely unknown, which says something about the distance between what iPhones can do and what most people know to ask them.
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