With iOS 27, Shortcuts is about to become what it was always meant to be

Source: 9to5Mac

The Shortcuts app has always been an amazingly powerful automation tool for users who know what these very words mean. But now, it may finally become an approachable tool that delivers on its true potential for users of all kinds. Here’s why.

Starting with the customer experience and working backwards to the technology

Even before Apple acquired Workflow in 2017 and turned it into Shortcuts in 2018, this app was one of the most impressive tools ever released on iOS.

It abstracted away much of the complexity that made macOS’s excellent Automator intimidating to some users, while preserving a level of firepower and inter‑app connection that had always felt impossible (or even forbidden) on the iPhone and iPad.

Apple has continued to improve Shortcuts over the years, including its recent integration with AI models, but much of its functionality has remained limited to a subset of users.

Once you learn how Shortcuts works—especially if you have some programming familiarity—you can do magic with it. Just ask Federico Viticci and the MacStories team and Stephen Robles, who have spent years showing just how far Shortcuts can go.

However, the majority of iPhone, iPad, and now Mac users haven’t found it approachable. Their needs go beyond “turn these photos into a GIF” or “turn off the living room lights when I leave home.” In fact, the workflows they could benefit from might challenge even the most advanced Shortcuts users.

A report from Bloomberg today made me even more excited for next month’s WWDC. It noted:

The version now in testing lets users create shortcuts simply by describing what they want them to do. Currently, users need to manually build shortcuts within the app or download them from Apple’s gallery.

In the updated app, users are presented with a prompt asking, “What do you want your shortcut to do?” along with a text field to describe the request. The system then automatically builds and installs the shortcut on the device.

This question—“What do you want your shortcut to do?”—is the key to what Shortcuts was always meant to be: not just an automation creativity exercise, but a solution hub for creating tailor‑made bridges between apps, files, and information, customized for every iPhone, iPad, and Mac user, regardless of technical proficiency.

Having an input field where users can describe, in plain language (or even by voice! see here), the result they need, and then have Shortcuts do the work, feels like a perfect embodiment of Steve Jobs’ WWDC 1997 mantra: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”

If Apple does this right, an AI‑powered Shortcuts app that understands what users are trying to do and turns that into a working shortcut—no matter how complex under the hood—could finally make Shortcuts as useful to regular users as it has long been to power users. And for those already familiar with the app, the ceiling is about to get even higher.

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