To create automations utilizing Apple’s Shortcuts app in your Mac, you are depending on Apple’s help for varied actions. Whereas Shortcuts helps an array of helpful actions, some aren’t within the app but, comparable to clearing all notifications or quitting all apps. If you wish to add a couple of extra useful actions to your Mac automations, take into account Shortcutie ($6), a robust extension for Shortcuts that allows you to execute actions Apple does not but help.
Shortcutie itself has no interface. As soon as put in, all of its actions will seem in Apple’s Shortcuts app in your Mac. To entry them, set up the app, open Shortcuts, and choose Shortcutie from the Apps tab in the correct pane. The app requires Accessibility permissions to perform, which is important as a result of macOS’s strict sandboxing guidelines forestall apps from working most of the actions this app helps. (Word: solely grant apps you belief, like Shortcutie, this permission.) When you grant it entry, you will discover new, helpful instruments in Shortcuts, comparable to altering your default browser, clearing all notifications, hiding all home windows, quitting all apps, and checking in case your display screen is being recorded, mirrored, or shared.
macOS helps all of those actions, however they don’t seem to be out there in Shortcuts, which prevents you from creating automation routines round these actions. After you have Shortcutie, you possibly can add these triggers to your shortcuts and execute complicated automations that your Mac does not in any other case help. Remember that the Shortcuts app seems within the menu bar and you’ll run automations immediately from the menu bar, too. That may make it a lot faster and simpler to run sure actions, such because the dreaded “clear all notifications.” Whenever you mix this app with Shortery, which helps you to run Mac automations primarily based on varied triggers, you possibly can automate just about every little thing.
Credit score: Pranay Parab
With out Shortcutie, you possibly can open the Notification Heart and clear notifications, however macOS does not at all times present the clear all button, forcing you to clear notifications one-by-one. With Shortcutie, I arrange a easy automation, and in two clicks, I am now capable of clear all alerts. Equally, quitting all apps is sort of simple with the motion added by this app. You usually do not want to do that, but when your Mac has slowed down attributable to a reminiscence leak or excessive ambient temperatures, Shortcutie’s stop all apps motion presents a one-click technique to cut back the burden in your pc. Listed below are some extra helpful actions from the app:
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Empty Trash
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Eject all disks
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Clear latest lists (from menus)
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Set grayscale mode
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Present/cover desktop widgets
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Get URL and title of the energetic browser tab
On the time of writing, Shortcutie helps 29 actions, and the developer, Sindre Sorhus, has promised so as to add extra. The most important concern is that Shortcutie depends on personal APIs to entry these actions and people can change at any level. The developer has promised to maintain a tab on these modifications and to help the app, but it surely does depart the app weak to shedding options. Common updates ought to be capable of repair any points which will crop up sooner or later, but it surely’s one thing to bear in mind.
I am not anxious although, realizing the developer: Sorhus has created over 50 apps and utilities for Mac and iPhone (Lifehacker has lined many), so I count on he’ll proceed to maintain Shortcutie up to date.
