With iOS 27, Shortcuts is about to become what it was always meant to be

The Shortcuts app has always been an amazingly powerful automation tool for users who know what these very words mean. But now, it may finally become an approachable tool that delivers on its true potential for users of all kinds. Here’s why.

Starting with the customer experience and working backwards to the technology

Even before Apple acquired Workflow in 2017 and turned it into Shortcuts in 2018, this app was one of the most impressive tools ever released on iOS.

It abstracted away much of the complexity that made macOS’s excellent Automator so intimidating to some users, while preserving a level of firepower and inter-app connection that had always felt impossible (or even forbidden) on the iPhone and the iPad.

And while Apple has continued to improve on Shortcuts over the years, including its recent integration with AI models, much of its functionality and benefits have remained limited to a subset of users.

Once you learn how Shortcuts works, and particularly if you’ve got (or develop) some familiarity with programming, you can just make magic with it. Just ask Federico Viticci and the MacStories team, and Stephen Robles, who have spent years showing just how far Shortcuts can go. I couldn’t possibly begin to describe just how much I’ve learned from them.

But as appealing as it is to believe that any regular user is just a nudge away from becoming the next great Shortcuts master, that has just never quite been true for the larger iPhone, iPad, and now Mac user base. Which is frustrating.

But that doesn’t mean these less technically inclined users don’t have needs that go beyond “turn these photos into a GIF” and “turn off the living room lights when I leave home”. In fact, the workflows they could benefit from might be the kind even the most advanced Shortcuts users would find challenging to build.

That’s why a report from Bloomberg today made me even more excited for next month’s WWDC. When mentioning an upcoming upgrade to Shortcuts, the report noted:

The version now in testing lets users create shortcuts simply by describing what they want them to do. Currently, users need to manually build shortcuts within the app or download them from Apple’s gallery.

In the updated app, users are presented with a prompt asking, “What do you want your shortcut to do?” along with a text field to describe the request. The system then automatically builds and installs the shortcut on the device.

This question, “What do you want your shortcut to do?” is the key to what Shortcuts was always meant to be: not an automation creativity exercise (even though it can absolutely be a fun one), but rather a solution hub for creating tailor-made bridges between apps, files, and information, in ways that are different for every single iPhone, iPad, and Mac user, regardless of their technical proficiency.

Having an input field where users can describe, in plain language (even by voice!), the result of what they need, and then have Shortcuts do the work to get them there, feels like one of the most beautiful and elegant examples of what Steve Jobs famously said during WWDC 1997: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”

In fact, that’s one of the most beautiful and elegant examples of what personal computing has always been about.

If Apple does this right, an AI-powered Shortcuts app that understands what users are trying to do and turns that into a working shortcut, regardless of how complicated it may be under the hood, could finally make Shortcuts as useful to regular users as it has long been to those in the know.

And of course, for users who already know their way around the app, the ceiling is about to get even higher, which is just as exciting.