How do you send a photo to several of your family members? Do you compose a group message, adding all their various addresses and phone numbers manually? Do you have several existing threads, each with a different combo of family members?
Today, we’re going to see a much easier way to send a photo to multiple recipients using Siri Shortcuts (or Apple’s Workflow app). It’s so simple that it should be built in to the iPhone.
Apple’s new Siri Shortcuts app, which is currently being beta tested ahead of a release alongside iOS 12, now comes with limited HomeKit support.
Its latest update gives testers the ability to add certain smart home controls to their workflows.
This Siri Shortcut will send an iMessage to a friend, spouse or other contact telling them how long it will be until you get to their location. Once set up, all you need to do is say something simple (and easy to remember) like “Home soon.”
This shortcut uses a brand-new feature in Shortcuts beta 2.0 that allows the sending of messages in the background, without having to confirm them first. It’s a small but powerful addition. Once Apple irons out the kinks, this feature could make a huge difference in how useful Siri Shortcuts will be day to day.
iOS 12 users can finally enjoy Fortnite again after Apple’s latest beta fixed random game crashes.
A problem with downloading Netflix titles has also been eliminated, but a number of new bugs have been introduced with this release — including on that breaks the new Screen Time feature.
Siri Shortcuts are the iOS way to automate actions you do over and over. The WWDC 2018 keynote gave an examples of chaining together a bunch of these actions into one shortcut — order your favorite “coffee,” and give you directions to work, or switch on the lights at home one whole hour before you get there in order to, I don’t know, waste electricity? To trigger these little automations, you just tell Siri, using a pre-chosen keyword/name.
However, you don’t alway want to put together lots of steps. Sometimes you just want Siri to carry out a single action with a Shortcut. For instance, opening up your favorite news site in Safari, or sending a message to your spouse, or viewing your most recent photos. The good news is, you can do all of these right now, even without the fancy new Siri Shortcuts app.
Even if you already saw the WWDC 2018 keynote where Apple showed off watchOS 5, there are tons of features that got brushed over — and some did not get mentioned at all.
As is our duty, we installed the first developer beta of watchOS 5 and gave it a full run-through so we can show you all the new features in action. Check out the video below.
Shortcuts is a cool feature in iOS 12 that carries out a collection on actions with a single Siri command. But a startup accuses Apple of stealing its logo.
The company’s name is Shift, and both it and the Apple Shortcuts app have logos that are stylized versions of the letter ‘s.’ Additionally, both use similar colors: blue and magenta.
In the battle of digital voice assistants, people often mock Siri for lagging behind competing products from Amazon and Google. During Monday’s WWDC 2018 keynote, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, glossed over those failings, calling Siri the “world’s most-used digital assistant.”
What he neglected to mention was the increasing frustration of Siri users expecting more from a voice assistant. From simple requests returning inaccurate results to the inability to performthat he compound actions, Siri was in desperate need of attention going into WWDC. But will the Siri upgrades in iOS 12 do the trick?
Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote lasted nearly 130 minutes and was jam-packed with new software goodies for developers and regular old Apple fanboys.
But if you were hoping to see some shiny new hardware unveiled at today’s event, you were in for some big disappointments. Apple is doubling down on its software game. And even though they didn’t have any new physical toys to show off, Tim Cook and company still managed to pull out some big surprises.
