One of the most common compliments (or complaints) I often get in the phone community is that the iPhone just works. It is quite fast, smooth and easy to use. For those looking for power user nirvana, Android is the place to play with custom ROMs and enjoy the joy of customization.
However, that doesn’t mean the iPhone can’t perform its own tricks. On the contrary, you can achieve really impressive multi-step automation. A better example? label. The pre-installed app is very impressive, especially thanks to the new AI features.
I recently created a “memory” shortcut to save important information. But instead of the tedious work of bookmarking pages, copying and pasting text and links or screenshots, I put them together. At the press of a button, the shortcut takes a screenshot, artificial intelligence summarizes the content on the screen, assigns it a title, searchable hashtags and saves it in a specific program.
Shortcut apps can do so much more thanks to AI. You can assign a ChatGPT task, use an on-device AI model, or assign more demanding tasks to Apple’s private cloud for more secure processing. I’ve created some AI-powered shortcuts to give you an idea of how useful they can be in your everyday life.
Find movie or TV show details from random clips
Let’s get straight to the point. Here’s how a custom shortcut took me from a random clip to where it was broadcast:
TikTok and Instagram are full of channels that share clips from TV shows and movies. These clips often go viral, but in many cases the name of the image is not mentioned in the caption or description. This is a very frustrating situation, especially if you decide to watch the whole thing after watching a 30- or 60-second clip.
Fortunately, with one click of an action button, you can perform a multi-step action that will give you the name of the movie or TV show, as well as the location to stream it. I created a shortcut that does the job in about six to seven seconds.
The easy way is to use Apple’s cloud AI model. You activate the shortcut, a screenshot is captured and sent to the AI. Within seconds, AI tells you the scene, actor names, movie or TV show, and other details in a pop-up window. It’s not 100% accurate, but with major entertainment franchises it gets the job done.
The most accurate method involves using Google Lens. Generally speaking, this is how it works. Let’s say you’re watching a video on Instagram. As soon as you activate the shortcut, the phone takes a screenshot and automatically sends it to Google Lens. The image is scanned and the title of the movie or TV show will appear on the screen.
You can stop the shortcut there. But I went one step further and tweaked it even more. After the Google Lens step, I created a five-second delay after which a pop-up window appears at the top of the screen. Here, just type the name of the movie or TV series and hit enter.
The name given to the artificial intelligence that tells you where a particular movie or TV show is available to watch, rent or stream. Think of it as Shazam, but for videos you watch online. I tried using Perplexity on the same label, which gave me additional information such as plot synopsis, rating, cast, etc.
When I integrate the distraction into the shortcut, the interface looks like this:
Prescription Assistant: The Antidote for Clicks
I cook a lot. Of course, my social networks know it too. However, not every photo and video of delicious food I see on Instagram feeds has a full recipe. In some healthy cases, I don’t even know what I’m seeing. This is where AI comes to the rescue.
I usually take a screenshot and do a reverse google image search. Once identified, I would do another round of research to find the recipe, understand its origins, and get details on its nutritional value. Of course, this also includes taking notes by hand.
Instead, I do everything in one click by activating the “recipe” shortcut. Let’s say I’m looking at a friend’s Instagram story where they shared a photo of food. Once the shortcut is activated, a screenshot is captured and the image is provided in ChatGPT.
The AI identifies the dish, shows the full recipe, lists all ingredients, cooking instructions, and a quick overview of the food and its nutritional value per serving. All these details along with the screenshot image are carefully saved in my Apple Notes.
Again, you can replace ChatGPT with Google Lens for ID, but then there’s an extra step where you have to type or copy and paste the name of the dish. It’s not that difficult to do, but it all depends on your personal preference.
One-touch personalized file summary
Apple has already integrated the compact feature into the Apple Intelligence stack. You can enable it with the Writing Tools system and even access it in Safari’s reading mode. However, this does not work with files stored locally on your phone.
With shortcuts, you can force ChatGPT to analyze any file. Apart from images, the OpenAI chatbot can also handle XLSX, CSV, JSON and PDF files. Make sure the ChatGPT extension is enabled in the Apple Intelligence and Siri dashboards in the Settings app.
Now you may be wondering why go through all this trouble instead of using the ChatGPT program. Well, because it’s a multi-step process. Also, every time you upload a file for analysis to the ChatGPT app, you should receive instructions. With a custom shortcut, you only need to share the file from the Share sheet.
More importantly, shortcuts allow you to follow a specific procedure every time. For example, I set it up to select a title, show a short table of contents, and then select all the key takeaways as bullet points. For added flexibility, you can automatically copy the full AI response and save it as a custom note. Simply put, you set rules for checking files.
Now there are two ways to use this shortcut. You go to the Files app, click the Share button, and then choose a shortcut to do so. Or you can treat the shortcut as its own and place its icon on the home screen. With the latter method, you just need to click on the icon and the file selection page will automatically open.
You can do a lot more by creatively manipulating AI in Shortcuts apps. All you need to do is find a task that could benefit from AI, and you can speed it up by creating a shortcut for it. And the best part is that you only need to describe the task and the AI will take care of the rest.
