To those who are able to test the Shortcuts app -
What shortcuts have you made? What do you find most useful about it?
I got the beta but I am having a hard time figuring out how to incorporate the app & shortcuts into my life
With the present iteration, I think of it as "WorkFlow+". It doesn't do much more than the existing Workflow app does. It will become a lot more powerful when developers are able to have their apps donate "intents" (read: actions) to being used within the app. Then you'll be able to chain discrete actions from various apps together into a macro, executing all of them in sequence.
As for things I've done with it: I'm a weather nut and wanted one touch access to the National Weather Service's short term weather model (the HRRR for other enthusiasts). To make an animated GIF, I had to extract a single hourly image for 14 separate hourly graphics. I used Shortcuts to do this, and animate the whole sequence into one GIF. I have an option built in to message this to people who might have a need to know whether storms are on the horizon for the day. FInally, I set all of this up to be triggered simply by activating Siri and saying "Latest HRRR" or by tapping the widget on the Today screen. So...bottom line... something that used to require me to navigate to 4 or 5 screens on Safari and select a number of options, can now be summoned with one touch of the screen.
I agree with you that figuring out what to use it for can be daunting. Many of the super power users (e.g., Federico Viticci) live on their phones and will use this to automate their phone lives. I tend to be more of a one and done phone user for productivity purposes: I pick it up when I need to do one discrete thing and then put it down (unless I'm using it for media consumption, which also doesn't seem to lend itself to automation).
I recommend you check out sharecuts.app to see what some of those power users have done already. Some are cool; others are head scratchers.
