Workflow

Apple Frames: A Shortcut for Framing Screenshots From Every Apple Device →

October 11, 2018 · 09:45

Federico Viticci, on MacStories:

When I published my iPhone XS Frames shortcut two weeks ago, I noted that my goal was to eventually support screenshots and device templates from other Apple devices, starting with the Apple Watch and MacBook Pro. After two weeks spent rebuilding the shortcut and asking Silvia to prepare several more templates, I’m happy to re-introduce my shortcut as the new and improved Apple Frames – a comprehensive custom shortcut to frame screenshots taken on every Apple device. Well, at least most of the current ones that the company is still selling.

Federico has two versions of the shortcut for Apple’s Shortcuts app — with and without the Macs. They’re both brilliant.

Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12

Everything You Need to Know About iOS 12 Shortcuts →

June 14, 2018 · 11:34

Federico Viticci, on MacStories:

On the surface, Shortcuts the app looks like the full-blown Workflow replacement heavy users of the app have been wishfully imagining for the past year. But there is more going on with Shortcuts than the app alone. Shortcuts the feature, in fact, reveals a fascinating twofold strategy: on one hand, Apple hopes to accelerate third-party Siri integrations by leveraging existing APIs as well as enabling the creation of custom SiriKit Intents; on the other, the company is advancing a new vision of automation through the lens of Siri and proactive assistance from which everyone – not just power users – can reap the benefits.

I was afraid magic variables would go away, but I’m surprised and happy to see that they have been retained. I like to imagine Ari Weinstein fought a battle there because this is not something I expected Apple to keep.

I hope they keep Ari and his team happy, so he can continue to build on the foundations of the most excellent Workflow (now Shortcuts) app. I don’t want even think about going back to using iOS without automation.

“I’m Sal Soghoian, and you’re wrong. My technology is better than Windows.” →

June 3, 2018 · 10:20

Jordan McMahon, for Wired:

When Jobs took over, he went on a campaign to salvage Apple’s remaining resources by hacking and slashing under-performing departments. The problem, Jobs said, was that Apple had lost its focus. The company was making too many products that people didn’t want to buy. After years of leading innovation in the PC industry, the Macintosh’s operating system had fallen behind its biggest competitor. “It used to be easy when we were 100 times better than Windows. But now that we’re not, you don’t know what to do,” Jobs told the room. This was a big slap in the face—just two years earlier, Jobs had quipped that Microsoft “had no taste.”

Soghoian didn’t like that. As Apple’s product manager of automation, he was tasked with finding new and clever ways to for users take tedious and repetitive tasks on the Mac—like organizing a bunch of files at once or resizing massive groups of photos—and write small bits of code to complete those tasks quickly.

“No, you’re wrong,” Soghoian told the notoriously brutal CEO. Jobs fired back: “And you are?”

“I’m Sal Soghoian, and you’re wrong. My technology is better than Windows.”

From AppleScript, through Automator, to Workflow for iOS, and Sal’s future in The Omni Group — the path of automation over the years is definitely interesting, but I still cannot fathom why Apple let Sal go.

Anyway, I rely on automating my tasks on Mac and iOS every single day, so I can’t help but wonder what its future will be. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Apple Has Acquired Workflow, a Powerful Automation Tool for iPad and iPhone →

March 23, 2017 · 08:54

Matthew Panzarino:

This is not a ‘pure acquihire’ in that Workflow — not just the talent — is being purchased in this deal. This makes sense and I’m glad to see it because Workflow itself was a prime meat example of how to find a need in the iOS ecosystem, tackle it in an interesting way and execute it with cleverness and attention to honoring the platform. Simply put it’s super smart, really well designed and works very well.

Wow! This is something I did not expect.

I use Workflow every single day and I just hope it won’t go away and will continue to be updated. I actually just used it to create this post.

Magic Variables in Workflow 1.7 Are Magic →

February 10, 2017 · 11:54

Federico Viticci:

Magic Variables mostly remove the need to manually save variables. They leverage Workflow’s Content Graph engine to automatically keep track of variables in the background, allowing you to access them at any time with the ability to change their type (format). It’s a novel idea, and it’ll take a few minutes to fully grasp, but it’s drastically superior to Workflow’s old variables. Magic Variables will change how you build workflows.

I started using the new Magic Variables this morning, trying to rework one of my older workflows. The one which I am in fact using to create this post. Thanks to the new system, I’m down to 6 steps instead of close to 20. There are two huge benefits: quicker workflow creation and much more readable workflows.

Awesome work!

How to Use Workflow for iOS When You Don’t Know Where to Start →

March 10, 2016 · 08:53

Federico Viticci:

With Workflow, your imagination is, in many ways, the only limit. And that can also be a problem at first. Facing the potential of Workflow and the breadth of its actions can be a little daunting; fortunately, the app makes it easy to get started and experiment.

The first thing you’ll want to understand is which kind of task you want to automate on your iOS device, and why. My suggestion, if you’re new to automation: Find common tasks that would truly benefit from requiring fewer seconds each day. They don’t even have to be extremely complex; something simple will do. When automating, it’s better to save a second on a trivial task that you repeat 10 times a day than to save 30 seconds on an impressive workflow you only need once a month.

A good starting point for those of you who are at a loss. I love the app myself. In fact, I used my own workflow to publish this post.

Daniel Details How to Use Drafts and Workflow for iOS →

January 25, 2016 · 16:27

Daniel Wallace:

If you liked my post about blogging on an iPad, and the best writing programs available on the iOS App Store, here’s a little more.

In my first post, I assumed that you were writing an essay-type post, full of big ideas, in which prose came first, and the links and quotations came second. First you wrote, and then, when you had finished writing, you went back and cleaned up the piece, got it ready for the web.

That’s why I began the piece talking about writing apps on the iPad, great programs like Ulysses and Drafts.

But, of course, not all blogging is like that. Sometimes we are responding to another person’s post, or want to connect a few different arguments; sometimes we just want to fire off a quick piece that’s nothing more than a link, a quotation, and a comment.

In theory, these sorts of posts would be a slog to compose on an iPad. You’ve got to select text on a web page, copy it into your text editor, go back, select links, copy them over, HTML or Markdown those links up, and then send the post to your blog. It’s a lot of bother for a quick response. But with the new capacities of iOS9, the best iPad (and iPhone) apps are getting better and better at speeding up the process for you.

Why should a short post take you a long time to write, when it doesn’t have to?

I’ve been meaning to incorporate the excellent Drafts for iOS [App Store] into my workflow for over a year now, for more automation. Daniel’s post, which details how he uses Drafts, has given me an excellent idea — to expand my workflow even more, to publish linked or regular posts, with quotes from the clipboard or Drafts, and mash it up all together in Workflow [App Store], without leaving Safari.

Hopefully my plan will be actually possible to execute…

Workflow for iOS – Publishing Linked Posts to WordPress

December 1, 2015 · 12:21

I bought Workflow for iOS [App Store] on the day it came out. The app was already amazing back then, but lacked a few features which could help me use it on a daily basis. The most recent update added WordPress support however. It took me a little over thirty minutes to put together a rough workflow for publishing linked posts on Infinite Diaries. I’ve been perfecting that workflow ever since and I’m finally ready to share it with the world.

Continue reading →

Using Workflow for iOS to Publish to WordPress →

November 24, 2015 · 22:57

Federico Viticci:

As I’ve teased in some articles over the past weeks, I’ve been using the new WordPress action to publish content to MacStories in a semi-automated fashion that doesn’t involve manual interaction with the WordPress admin interface or Python.

This post was published via a quick workflow that I made in… Workflow for iOS [App Store]. Took me about half an hour to perfect, complete with quoting text selected in Safari.

Thanks for the tips Federico!