Today’s new shortcut is How far did I walk today? is designed for CES attendees but is also good for anyone really:
Looks at the Health app for total steps and distance for today, then formats the information to display in an alert or be spoken back from Siri.
Uses only the Apple Watch as the main source of data so no information is duplicated from the phone.
Built after day 1 of my first CES when I took 26,264 steps for a total of 13.2 miles, almost entirely in/around the convention center areas.
This is also a good demo of how Siri Shortcuts can be very useful just with the Health app – there’s tons of health “samples” to dig through and examine different types to work with.
Here’s a Personal Automation for Apple Watch that I’m running automatically at the start of my Walking workouts – Log UV index:
Gets the current weather at the current location and logs the UV index for the hour into the Health app, then displays it or speaks it back when run via Siri.
Includes “Get Device Name” and an “If” action to account for being run on the iPad, which does not have the Health app and would otherwise fail.
I built this because I wanted to track the UV levels I am being exposed to on a daily basis, whether it be too much during the summer or not enough during the winter.
I use this inside a Personal Automation for Apple Watch set to the “Walking” workout type – the Run Shortcut action runs the Log UV Index when the trigger is met as my workout begins. That way, any time I go on an outdoor walk and I begin a Workout, this will log the sun exposure I’m getting into the Health app.
Since having an Apple Watch and seeing the UV index on my watch faces, I have realized just how strong the afternoon sun in California can be in and, conversely, how little I was actually getting outside during the winter. I also included the “X out of 14” bit to help with the context, since I doubt many people know the bounds of UV index scores 🤓
Since I already use the Outdoor Walk feature every day, it’s an easy and automatic way to trigger a shortcut reliably – why not log the UV index every time? Some day in the future I might be able to make an interesting insight from having the data saved.
Plus, I may stack on other shortcuts using the “Run Shortcut” action, treating my daily walks as a human-powered hamster wheel for all my Shortcuts Automation needs.
Jon Fingas, writing for Endgaget about Transit for iOS releasing a new version of their Apple Watch app:
The popular public transportation tool is now a native app, of course, but it also gives you considerably more detail than just arrival times, including future arrivals and a map indicating where to go.
I’m glad to see more apps slowly returning to the Apple Watch (or adopting it for the first time). Will be trying this out over the weekend 🤓.
Matt Birchler on the Apple Watch’s latest operating system update:
watchOS continues to grow up, and each year it gets objectively better than the year previous. The team behind this product have done a fantastic job of maintaining its simplicity all while adding on genuinely useful features that don’t always feel like much at the time, but have added up to an improved platform in almost every way.
Matt does these reviews every year, and this one summarizes the changes nicely. Also, I’m totally using the list of available workouts as a reference for future Shortcuts posts.
Maybe you’re accidentally gripping the volume up button as you also press power to turn off your iPhone, or you’re pressing the Digital Crown and side button at the same time to pause an Apple Watch workout1 – either way, you probably don’t want most of the screenshots that are filling up your library.
With the Shortcuts app in the iOS 12 beta (or using Workflow if you’re not on the beta), you can set up a three-action script to get your latest screenshots, pick which ones to delete, and delete them all in one go.
Add the actions by searching in the action drawer or browsing through the Content Types categories, then dragging them into the following order:
Get Latest Screenshots
Choose From List
Delete Photos
I’ve increased the number of screenshots to 30 so there’s a full screen to choose from, toggled Select All Initially, and set it up with a Siri command as well.
This shortcut is useful since you don’t have to sort out regular photos you want to keep, all the images are already selected by default so you only have to unselect the ones you want to save, and it will confirm the deletion in case you make a mistake.
If you use the Add To Siri function available in the shortcut’s settings, you can set up your own custom voice trigger and later ask Siri to “delete my screenshots” (for example) when you want to kick off this flow.
One thing to note: the shortcut won’t operate entirely in the Siri interface because it requires the menu UI and delete confirmation, so currently it’s expected behavior that using Siri will just open the app and run the shortcut.2
Additionally, you could switch up this shortcut for new purposes with a few tweaks – if you’re not using any of your screenshots anymore, just bump up the number further or run this a couple of times to clean them all out; or, maybe swap out the first two actions with Select Photos to pick from your entire library instead of choosing only from screenshots.
Apple assigns the trigger of pressing the buttons to both pause your Apple Watch workout and take a screenshot, so if you want to keep the screenshot function on you’ll have a library full of mid-workout screencaps. ↩
I hope this type of functionality can be displayed within Siri in the future so shortcuts can operate entirely without opening the app. Admittedly, however, that’d likely be a hard user interface to make look natural from within the Siri overlay. ↩
