About Matthew
Hi, I’m Matthew Cassinelli. This is my website, a publication about how people can get more out of their technology.
I previously worked as part of the Workflow team before it was acquired and turned into Shortcuts by Apple – but now I work independently, sharing my knowledge of how to use Siri Shortcuts.
About this Catalog
Since leaving Apple, I’ve collected much of my knowledge into the new Shortcuts Catalog, a web-based collection of information related to using Siri Shortcuts:
- My Shortcuts Library, a collection with over 50 custom shortcuts for you to browse through, download for yourself, and get ideas on what to build next,
- The Action Directory, a glossary-based list of the native actions for the Shortcuts app, now updated with descriptions as well as inputs and outputs relevant to the action.
I will also continue sharing regular public updates alongside new releases of the Shortcuts app, so make sure to check back.
About the Membership
With my mission of open access in mind, I am launching a membership program that’s instead focused on freemium material.
Half the Shortcuts Library itself is publicly available—anyone can download the free shortcuts themselves and learn about the actions—but the membership buys you extra shortcuts, bonus knowledge, exclusive access and Shortcuts resources I’m creating.
Read on to learn more – or jump ahead and join now.
What you’ll get as a member
1. Extra shortcuts (see full list below)
Members have access to a private page curating 25+ members’ shortcuts not available otherwise.
Some are exclusive to the membership program, while others are available in pre-release before they go out to the public in future Catalog updates.
Members can see the bonus material from the Extras page, plus get the full list of members’ shortcuts below or on the main Catalog page.
2. Bonus Catalog knowledge
Members can see extra information I’ve curated for each section of the catalog, available anywhere my shortcuts or the actions are embedded.
Members also get custom views to browse the actions, all interlinked through categories and tags I’ve added:
Shortcuts Library
Public: Name, Explanation, Description, iCloud link, Folder
Private: Devices this works well with, how to run this shortcut, the main features the shortcut uses, and important actions included in the shortcut*
Action Directory
Public: Name, Description, Group and subgroup in the Shortcuts app, my shortcuts that utilize this action
Private: Input and Results accepted by the action, Parameters you can change on the action, my complexity rating, whether or not the action asks for input, and the related actions that work well together.
3. Exclusive livestreams and a private chatroom
Members will get access to exclusive livestreams and a private chatroom.
Every other week I’ll be hosting livestreams for members via an unlisted YouTube stream – we’ll discuss Shortcuts on a higher level, talk directly about what everyone wants to see, and just have fun.
Plus, I run a publicly-available Slack community called the Shortcuts User Group – there’s a special #members channel exclusive to the membership where I share bonus materials, information about the Catalog, and answer specific questions about the membership.
4. Resources, notes, and archived material
Members can also get access to a variety of notes, checklists, and research material that I publish ahead of videos/blog posts I’m creating.
Currently, members can see my Home Screens and Apple Watch faces, for example.
In addition, I’ve curated a list of past livestreams that’ve been archived or spread out across my channels into a convenient list for members to dive in at their leisure.
Become a member
I’m creating this membership program because I believe independent, member-supported creation is the best way to enable the production of high quality content through sustainable methods.
You can already learn about technology on every other corner of the internet – this huge effort and unique expertise can instead help you:
- Save time learning about Shortcuts on your own
- Discover more uses for the technology you already have,
- Get better ideas that hadn’t occurred to you but will mesh into your life quickly, and
- Reveal new insight into your own relationship with your tools
I’ve been at this for years now and I still feel like I am barely getting started – thanks in advance for your support.
Join now
Monthly plan
$5/month
Check out what’s up for now
See what the deal is
Annual plan
$50/year
Buy future shortcuts today
Come and stay a while
Want to give extra support and kickstart my plans?
Sign up for a founding membership.
Member shortcuts 🔐
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Pauses any current media, lowers the volume and brightness to a reasonable amount, turns off any extra network activity, turns on DnD, then presents a menu of actions to take in the YouTube app, including:
- a custom queue
- searching with voice or going straight to Subscriptions
- opening History, Watch Later, and Playlists
- opening shared links for CornerTube automatically
- using Shazam and opening the music video for the song
Opens menus for controlling my HomeKit scenes, controlling my Mac via SSH, setting up environment-type scenes or actions, activating other smart assistants, or controlling Sound Recognition.
Waits a few seconds (to close the shortcut), takes a screenshot, waits for you to return to Shortcuts, then asks you to enter the title before adding it to Reminders.
Takes the current contents of your clipboard, stores it, and presents it alongside values from iCloud Drive previously stored with this shortcut to copy later.
If more than the preset Number of items are stored, the shortcut will only present number of recent items.
Presents a menu for you to:
• Open the handwriting folder in Notes
• Create a new document with today’s date for writing in
• Copy the text out of a note in the folder
• Open the Pencil page in Settings
Presents a series of menus, starting with length of the workout to set Do Not Disturb, which device to set the Apple TV up or to pick Noise Control & then opens into a workout type of your on the current device using a deep link.
Presents options for various health activities:
• Meditation, showering, and brushing teeth
• Logging water/caffeine
• Opening the Fitness app and setting manual stand reminders
• Performing an anxiety awareness check
• Setting a nap timer
• Setting your alarm by the sunrise time or changing your sleep schedule
Opens into a variety of pages in the Health app, including: sleep, nutrition, handwashing, toothbrushing, activity, flights climbed, body measurements, mobility, heart data, VO2 max info, environmental volume levels, and headphone levels.
Presents a large list of actions related to acting on links with Safari:
• Searching the web for topics
• Opening URLs, deep links, or into Safari reader
• Adding articles to Reading list/Reminders or speaking them aloud
• Getting the original link for shortened URLs/redirects
• Running pages through Snopes or the Wayback Machine
• Viewing source code, grabbing header images, or utilizing RSS feeds
• Running Javascript on current Safari pages
• Doing keyword research
Presents a menu for actions to take using Twitter, including:
• Opening Twitter, Twitter News, and Lists
• Tweeting & live-tweeting with a hashtag
• Searching for Links, your own Tweets, and via People You Follow
• Opening “Followers You Know” for a person
• Grabbing a Markdown version of a tweet
• Extracting every tweet shared into a simpler dictionary
Presents a menu for options related to the Get My Location action and the GPS coordinates associated with it, allowing you to copy them, share them with someone, or log the spot in Notes. Also includes an option to open Find My Friends and see where your devices/friends are located.
Shows options for using Maps:
• Searching, getting driving directions, getting travel time
• Picking destinations halfway, logging mileage
• Driving to specific places or picking types of locations
• Using biking directions, transit resources, and rideshare actions
Presents a menu for setting voice & data modes, plus opening Settings pages for Cellular, Personal Hotspot, Low Data Mode, VPN Settings, Network Statistics.
Presents a menu of various commands for controlling podcasts in Overcast, including changing episodes, starring the current episode, switching chapters, changing speeds, setting the Sleep Timer, seeking playback, starting up playback, saving quotes, copying links from show notes, and opening into the Podcasts app. Also includes Share sheet option for Adding to Overcast from Podcasts, and actions from Timery for formatting durations.
Presents a menu of various activities for preparing to record a podcast, including contacting your cohost, researching stories, reading up on those stories later, grabbing the titles & links and formatting them for Google Docs, opening said Google Doc, and more.
Shows options for various ways to watch video, whether picture-in-picture on the current device or using an Apple TV setup. Includes scenes for TV mode and movie mode, a way to quickly put lyrics onto an Apple TV, and a quick link to the latest $0.99 rental in iTunes.
Presents a menu for various gaming apps, HomeKit scenes, chatting with gaming friends, or for sharing your game codes.
Presents a series of options for utilizing your camera apps, sharing from albums you don’t use enough, capturing unique images using stitching, opening camera settings, & accessing the Magnifier.
Allows you to perform a series of calculations, either by typing it out, using a tip calculator, checking the percentage change between two values, counting or splitting up lists, and doing conversions like timestamps to seconds, time between dates, and MPH KM per HR or Miles Kilometers.
Contains deep links to various iPad settings, including multitasking controls, keyboard backlight brightness, and other keyboard settings. Also includes a subroutine for my Handwriting shortcut, plus the ability to open Luna Display.
Multitool for managing Shortcuts, including:
• Researching from the User Guide, the Gallery, and MacStories
• Opening Shortcuts, running shortcuts, and editing shortcuts
• Listing your shortcuts, folder names, or generating iCloud links
• Checking your Shortcuts stats
• Generating deep links back into Shortcuts
Takes any data coming from the share sheet or clipboard and opens into the Shortcuts app to the Content Graph viewer, a mode that exposes the underlying components of content that's being passed through each step of your shortcuts.
The Content Graph is how Shortcuts knows which actions connect to each other, how to intelligently convert data from one type to another, and exposes magic variables/extra details to the user that lets them extract individual bits of data from the resulting content coming from actions.
Meant primarily for "Run Shortcut" as a debugging step, this takes the shortcut input and displays it in an alert so the user can see what type of content is being passed through – accounts for images/media in a notification if present.
Also displays the option to Continue or Cancel the current shortcut in case you want to stop and fix something.
Works with content copied to the clipboard as well.
The weekly newsletter
While anyone can sign up to receive updates about the Shortcuts Catalog through my brand-new email newsletter called “What’s new in Shortcuts” that goes out every weekend, new members will automatically be subscribed.
This newsletter will include:
- Outbound links to Shortcuts stories,
- Links to various Catalog updates,
- Any new material I’ve created that work, plus
- Information on my upcoming schedules.
Plus, the newsletter will link back to any new private material for members only each week it becomes available.
About Matthew
MatthewCassinelli.com is a website covering Siri Shortcuts, Apple products, and related technology, created by technologist Matthew Cassinelli – hello!
I am extremely excited about the potential that people have in unlocking the capabilities of their personal technology to do more for them while spending less time doing it all.
Recent advances in automation have put the power back into an individual’s hands and allowed everyday people to create technologies for themselves (and others) without the need for coding knowledge or traditional computers – Apple’s Siri Shortcuts.
I had the privilege of joining the Shortcuts team before they were Shortcuts – I worked for Workflow, the app that Apple acquired before eventually turning it into today’s Siri Shortcuts features. At Workflow, I worked on the app’s marketing, writing copy for the main website, writing the app’s documentation, and creating hundreds of shortcuts for the in-app Gallery (which is still largely available in Shortcuts today).
As a creator, I use automation to:
- Take the busywork out of daily tasks,
- Share about products that truly solve my problems, and
- Construct workflows to help me spend less time getting more done.
That focus is my lens for exploring how life can be lived when augmented by a thoughtful application of technology.
In that regard, my goal for this site to make as much information I know as freely accessible and available as possible.
I fully believe in the potential for Shortcuts to change the world. By making it possible for individuals to build shortcuts, taking advantage of the capabilities of coding on mobile devices and utilizing them in their daily lives, Apple took Workflow and is turning it into programming for the masses.
Now, I’m utilizing what I’ve learned in my history as I’m working independently, teaching people across a variety of media – I hope I can be a conduit for you to tap into this exciting energy.
Thanks for stopping by.