Siri Shortcuts Are Amazing!

When it comes to iOS 12 the promised performance improvements has been one of the biggest reasons for people to upgrade from iOS 11. With the mess that iOS 11 was for some users, iOS 12 has been a breath of fresh air. But there has been one feature that more or less flew under the radar but has proven itself to be immensely useful.

Siri Shortcuts On iOS 12
Now if you don't know what Siri Shortcuts are then you'd find yourself much more at home here. Now that you're in the know lets get on with the show. The first aspect of Siri Shortcuts that I am fascinated by is how polished it is for a generation one product. Remember this is like the 2011 Siri or the 2016 version of portrait mode. Back when they both came out they were more gimmicky than of actual value. But with time they have grown into the useful products that they are today(Yes even you Siri). The app is well designed, the scripting and coding options are exhaustive and are more than what most people will ever use. They even have a curated list of shortcuts straight from Apple right there in the Shortcuts app.

When it comes to the Shortcuts app I've seen that you're only limited by your creativity. Taking a quick look at r/Shortcuts on reddit, You can see the amazing things that people have come up with from a Siri command to find the nearest EV plug point, to an Amazon product price history chart, to an IMDB ratings fetcher and even a Siri extension for Spotify and even Star Trek themed responses for Siri! The exhaustive list of commands that I was talking about earlier has paved the way for these amazing Shortcuts. Sure finding your way around the app might be hard at first it may take a bit of fiddling to get the shortcut to do what you want it to but as with most things in life it is rewarding.


 Another thing that has me floored is how un-gimmicky Shortcuts is. Shortcuts are a genuinely better way to get work done on your device from turning on the personal hotspot that usually takes several steps to reading a QR code. One of the best uses I have for shortcuts is to download YouTube videos right into my camera roll from the share sheet. Previously I had to side load Youtube++ onto my iPhone for this functionality and now I can do pretty much the exact same thing but minus the intrusive ads. Another great use for Siri Shortcuts that I've seen online is a Shortcut that starts to record video if you get pulled over by cops. The list goes on, a PDF converter, a pay wall bypasser, a file downloader and a gif maker. These are all amazing implementations of Siri Shortcuts.
Last but not least I'm amazed at the community that has sprung up around Siri Shortcuts. The Siri Shortcuts community has eclipsed the workflow community that predates shortcuts by about three years in a matter of months. It is this robust and creative community that came up with all of the amazing Shortcuts I talked about. 

I'd like to draw a parallel between Siri first came out and now. People were excited and people were using Siri for the novelty aspect of it but this time around people are using Shortcuts for the novelty aspects of it as well as for the utility it offers and it is this inherent interest and third party support (Which might I add is growing by the day) is what will make Siri Shortcuts better than ever