Apple will let you build workflows using AI in its new Shortcuts app

Apple has leveraged AI to make its visual-scripting tool, Shortcuts, easier to use in iOS 27.

The Shortcuts app was largely built for power users who wanted to automate repetitive tasks, create workflows, or set up multi-app actions. The new version of Shortcuts will instead allow users to write a prompt and simply describe what they want to do.

The new feature is powered by Apple Intelligence, which helps to determine what a natural language description means so it can build out the required steps.

“While super powerful, the process of creating these shortcuts can feel, well, complicated,” admitted Celcia Dantas, Sr. Manager of Home Software Product Marketing during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday.

The AI update makes the Shortcuts app more approachable and expands what non-technical people can do, as they’ll no longer need to worry about finding the right app actions or variables.

Dantas also offered an example of how this feature could be put to real-world use, suggesting that users could design a shortcut that would automatically notify their partner when they leave work and give them an expected ETA for their arrival at home.

Instead of having to figure out how to build this type of automation, users could just type in a request, and Shortcuts would then pull together whatever system and app actions are needed. In this case, it would create an automation that runs the shortcut once the users leaves work — accessing a stored address — then calculates their ETA using Apple Maps, and sends the alert via Messages.

Users can also make edits or changes by describing them, Apple notes. In the “leaving work” example, for instance, the user could edit it after the fact to start playing a favorite podcast, for instance.

The updated version of Shortcuts will roll out with iOS 27 later this fall.

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