“fast charge” Siri Shortcut

Rey Ian Cabanganan shared a handy Siri Shortcut over of the Siri Shortcuts Facebook group which does a good job of optimizing your phone for “fast charging”. Now, obviously, none of the charging technologies is changed using this shortcut. It simply switches off all of the battery intensive functionality on your device. What’s more, to save you the effort of having to switch all the services back on, it will prompt you in 30-minute intervals, so once your battery has reached the required percentage it will switch them all back on again.

Ian appreciates his device knowing who is boss and has added voice acknowledgement of his status. I’ve removed those sections, the rest I’ve left in place.

You can download it from here

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Siri Shortcut Favorites

For sometime now I have been a big fan of the Apple Workflow app, which Apple acquired 2 years ago. So needless to say, I was very excited when I learnt about their intention to bundle the Shortcuts app with iOS 12 back in July. As a veteran applications developer, I like automating things where possible and the Siri Shortcuts app enables just that. With the benefits of it being ‘cross-device’ and also actionable via voice from the HomePod.

The app is amazingly powerful, with third parties updating their apps all the time to support the new hooks.

The social media platforms are awash with Shortcut examples, the best of which I’ve found so far are attached to a conversation on Redit by user Varoeldurr;

It’s not as large as it used to be mainly because I had to delete a lot of them to reduce clutter.

Some of them are self-explanatory, but a few are personalized so they might not make sense to you. I’ll try to explain. It’ll take forever to share each one so let me know if you find one interesting and I’ll share later tonight before I sleep.

From left to right

Music:

  • Say you shuffle your music, you land on a song you love and you want to play the whole album. This will do it. LINK
  • Shuffle a playlist of favorite songs (~3000) LINK
  • Sometimes I listen to an album of an artist I just discovered, so I like it and I want to know where to go next. This will take you to an aggregator that ranks the artist’s top albums. LINK
  • Tweet a song you’re listening to with an album artwork and a YouTube link of your choice (it’ll take you to YT app and you copy a link then it’ll take you back). LINK
  • Shuffle all songs LINK
  • Shuffle albums (you play a random album in full then move to the next random album). LINK
  • Play one song of your choice and then shuffle all songs. LINK
  • Get artwork of your current song LINK
  • Add current album to your favorite playlist (same playlist mentioned above) LINK
  • Similar to the one above except here it asks you for input which should be an artist name LINK
  • Search lyrics of current song LINK. Better shortcut

Keyboard shortcuts:

  • Presents some codes (¯_(ツ)_/¯ etc) LINK
  • Lets you type a setup and a punchline then copies the text to your clipboard LINK
  • Type an emoji and it’ll name it LINK
  • Get a wall of text from your clipboard, find a word and replace with another. LINK

Camera roll:

  • Create a grid from camera roll LINK
  • Combine Screenshots LINK
  • Upload to imgur and copy link to clipboard LINK
  • Save video from Safari LINK
  • Convert video to GIF LINK
  • Select multiple screenshots and delete them LINK

Web:

  • Open a Reddit link in Apollo LINK
  • Same for Tweetbot LINK
  • Download YouTube LINK
  • Download videos from major social networks LINK Updated shortcut
  • Download a file LINK
  • Shorten URL LINK
  • Want to read a NY times or WashPost article and get hit with a paywall? This will take you to an add free webpage of the whole article LINK
  • Show a graph of an Amazon product from CamelCamelCamel LINK

Utilities:

  • Kidnapped and want to ask for help but don’t know SOS? Well, this can save you by sending the signal using flashlight LINK
  • Flip a coin LINK
  • Control center DND has improved but not dramatically. Sometimes you want to turn it on and disable at a certain time. This allows you to do that. LINK

Random:

  • Calculate how many days between two dates LINK
  • Calculate Tip LINK
  • Speak body of article LINK

Edit: Just updated my comment with links. And yes, I used a shortcut to automate part of the process:)

I did want to embed the thread into the page, however – reddit has other ideas..

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Hide stock iOS apps

One bone of contention for many iOS users is the ‘forced’ stock apps which come bundled with the iPhone/iPad and its mobile operating system. 

I’m not just talking about the stocks and shares app either.. Power users may chose alternatives to the email, calendar, notes, reminders and maybe even messages apps. 

Personally I just bury the stock apps away inside a folder, on a tab I rarely visit. However if you prefer to keep your iDevice spotless you can follow this video tutorial to temporarily make them disappear.. That is, until a reboot occurrs, then you’ll have to follow the steps again. 


As a side, Apple are planning on changing the way stock apps work in a future release of iOS which will mean you’ll be able to remove at least some of them ‘permanently’. 

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Clear iOS app cache to speed up iDevice

A little known trick has been tweeted about by an iOS Developer

Basically by repeatedly tapping one of the software buttons in one of Apples stock apps iOS will clear down its app cache. Which is believed to improve overall performance of iOS devices. 

To perform this “trick” launch the App Store, and tap on the featured star button 10 times in quick succession. If you’ve successfully activated the clear down, the AppStore screen will appear to reload, thus indicating the cache has been cleared. 

This is also said to resolve issues with app downloads stuck in a limbo state. 

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Launch Apps from iOS Notification Centre using LaunchCode

Intelligent Apps Releases LaunchCode Shortcut With Notification Center

Intelligent Apps Releases LaunchCode Shortcut With Notification Center

If you love your iPhone and your Apps so much so that your iPhones pages are crammed full with many apps, you’ll know how painful it can be searching all those icons for that app you’re after. Sure you can use Spotlight to quickly search and launch your app, but if it’s a collection of apps you launch all the time check out LaunchCode.

Using LaunchCode you can launch Apps from iOS Notification Centre, or by drawing predefined custom symbols inside the launch pad of the app.

The ultimate goal of LaunchCode Shortcut Center is for users to use their iPhone as an extension of themselves and not as the focal point of their attention. They will be able to complete tasks, call contacts, listen to their favorite radio station, and even open Maps with directions to their home all without looking at their phone. Muscle memory will take over. All that is required is for one to draw their symbol on the screen and the phone will obey their command.

With the ease of this user interface, this is the only app iPhone users will ever need in their iPhone dock. Unlike other productivity apps, LaunchCode injects the human interface into the iPhone. Humans communicate nonverbally in ways such as with gestures, letters and symbols, and now can communicate with an iPhone the same way.

Intelligent Apps plans to release two versions of LaunchCode. A free version which users can program with up to 5 app shortcuts and 5 action shortcuts and a paid version with which users can program unlimited app shortcuts and action shortcuts.

For more LaunchCode information, including more features, screenshots and videos, check out the official LaunchCode website.

Device Requirements:

  • iPhone and iPod touch
  • Requires iOS 6.0 or later
  • Size: 40 MB

Pricing and Availability:

Full version is available for £2.99 while the lite version is available for Free. Both apps are available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Productivity category.

app-store-banner

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