Shortcuts is an essential app for iOS that lets users build script-like systems with a simple drag and drop interface. It’s powerful enough for experts, giving them the flexibility to combine numerous applications and web services into a single shortcut. But its still able to maintain an approachability that allows novice users to find utility in it too.
The following is a continuously updated collection of shortcuts for online publishing and the open web.
Launch Ulysses: Opens a new sheet in Ulysses with my template for publishing feature articles. Typically initiated from Shortcut’s today view widget, but could also be launched from a home screen shortcut or from within the Shortcuts app itself.
Push To Ulysses: When viewing a webpage in Safari, initiate Push to Ulysses from the share sheet. A new document will be opened in Ulysses with my template for publishing Linked List items. If activated with text selected on the webpage, that text will be placed in a blockquote within the body of the template.
Publish Link Post: Designed to work with the template mentioned above. This shortcut will set the URL slug, tags, category, custom field, and schedule the post to publish.
Publish Feature Article: Designed to work with the template mentioned above. This shortcut sets the URL slug, tags, category, and schedules the post to publish.
Publish Update: When sharing Markdown text in Ulysses that has already been published, initiating Publish Update from the share sheet will copy the post contents to your device’s clipboard and displays a search view in your WordPress dashboard with the post title as the search term. You can then use select all and paste in the post’s compose screen to publish the update.
Retired
I’m no longer using or maintaining the following Shortcuts, which were originally included in The Toolkit:
+Shaarli: Save links to Shaarli, a self-hosted bookmarking app.
Icon Grid: A self-contained version of Federico Viticci’s icon grid shortcut that he shared in a Club MacStories newsletter. It has been modified to run from the share sheet, when viewing a text document or webpage that includes links to applications in the App Store. I’ve also transitioned to using Shortcut’s new Mask Image action for adding the proper border radius to each of the icons.
iTunes Affiliate: When launched, this workflow will open the iTunes Affiliate dashboard app or website, depending on whether you’re on an iPad or iPhone. This let’s you have a consistent icon for the affiliate dashboard on all of your devices. When adding to your home screens, I suggest using this icon for the shortcut — from Apple’s Classic Mac sticker pack — and hiding the PH Enterprise app in a folder on your iPhone.
Jetpack Stats: Can be used to launch directly into the stats interface of the WordPress app for any WordPress.com site or Jetpack-powered site using the stats module. Implementation instructions and more information about the shortcut can be found in the initial write-up regarding it.
Push To Reddit: A shortcut for sharing your site’s most recent article to Reddit. It can be run from Workflow’s today view widget, a shortcut on your home screen, or from within Workflow itself. The only caveat is that you’ll have to use the desktop version of Reddit’s site — their URLs for submitting links don’t appear to work if you’re redirected to the mobile site.
Push To WordPress: When sharing Markdown text from Ulysses that’s written in the templates mentioned above, Push To WordPress will publish Linked List items and feature articles to your WordPress installation. The shortcut automatically sets tags, URL slug, a custom field for links, and determines which category to use based on the title’s header level — “##” for feature and “###” for links.
Subscribe to RSS: A share sheet shortcut that helps streamline the process of subscribing to a site’s RSS feed in Tiny Tiny RSS.
Title Case: A simple workflow that converts the text on your clipboard to title case using Brett Terpstra’s title case API.
Upload Image: Activated through the share sheet when viewing an image in Photos. Upload Image resizes the image if it is wider than 1534px, utilizes the TinyPNG API to compress the photo, then it is renamed and uploaded to your WordPress installation. Upon completion, the image’s URL is copied to your device’s clipboard.
Wayback Machine: An share sheet workflow that opens webpages and links in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Website Info: Run through the share sheet while viewing a site in Safari, Website Info opens builtwith.com in a new tab giving you a variety of information about the site.
Word Counter: An share sheet shortcut that displays the number of words and average reading time for an article in Safari.
