Siri Shortcuts app gets updated with weather, alarms, timers and more

Along with today's announcements of new iPad and Mac, Apple also released an updated version of its Siri Shortcuts application. The application, which was first presented at WWDC, came with iOS 12 as a way to unlock Siri's potential by allowing users to create their own voice commands and custom workflows. Now, you can also do some new things, like setting alarms and timers, getting the latest weather and more.

Climate actions should be especially useful for those who have created custom routines in the morning with shortcuts from Siri, just like you. Now you can use the most recent climate in your shortcuts with the new actions "Get current climate" and "Get weather forecast". Being able to request this type of information is already among the main use cases for voice assistants, such as Alexa and Google Assistant, so it makes sense to offer this type of commands to the users of the Siri Shortcuts as well.

With these options, you can now request current conditions, forecasts (by hour, by day or by 10 days), or by any specific conditions, such as humidity, chance of rain, air quality and more.

Also useful are the new "Create Alarm actions", "Activate alarm" and "Start timer", which addressed another notable hole in the application of Shortcuts at launch. Many people were confused about how to use alarms within the application because these actions were not available, and the request often came up on Apple's own support site. The new version, Siri Shortcuts 2.1, addresses this problem.

Other new actions include the ability to convert between a variety of units the actions "Measurement" and "Convert measure"; the ability to obtain the most recent set of photos imported from the Photos application through the "Get Last Imported" action; and the ability to start recording videos immediately in the "Take video" action.

Interestingly, Apple did not call the latter in the update text of the app store, perhaps because all news is a shortcut created by the user called "Police" recently received. "Police" allows you to issue a command Verbal that performs a series of actions, including sending messages to a friend, reducing the brightness of the phone and pausing the sounds on your phone, then giving you a button to press to start recording. modify the "Police" shortcut to start recording immediately.

The updated application also fixes a problem with the use of Siri shortcuts with HomePod.Now, HomePod's media content on AirPlay will be automatically played, when run the HomePod shortcut via Siri, which makes the most sense.

Version 2.1 of the Siri shortcuts is the first import update ante after the launch of the application with iOS 12. However, today's app still greatly appeals to iOS advanced users: those who already felt comfortable using their predecessor, Workflow, and who understand how to build routines .

It is likely that the most common users are exposed to the extended powers of Siri through their favorite applications. With iOS 12, several of the main developers updated their applications with the "Add to Siri" buttons that point out special tasks that their applications can perform through voice. Early adopters on this front included Pandora, The Weather Channel, Sky Guide, Citymapper, Google News, TripIt, Trello, Monster and others.

The updated version of Siri's shortcuts is available for download from the App Store.

Leave a Reply