Times and again I am amazed at how good #linux (and #gnome) is on a daily basis. Recently I started writing in #thaiscript and got myself a Thai #keyboard. Now I can easily switch between the different input methods via a #shortcut and even have a peek at the #keyboardlayout when needed. Feels like an #opensource#luxury in many respects. 😜️
I spent about 20 minutes last night updating some CSS on the ol’ blog. Nothing has really changed except now when I break down a #Shortcut into steps, the table has a nice Shortcuts-themed background to set it apart from the text of the page.
@atnbueno I take a giant screenshot on my phone using the Picsew app, then manually split it using Pixelmator Pro on my Mac. Pixelmator (and Photoshop) have a “slice” tool where you can draw lines on an image, then export each slice as a separate jpg. The files are names sequentially (slice1, slice2, etc).
I have another #Shortcut (that I should write about...) that generates the table in Markdown, including the step numbers, image URLs and placeholders for the description.
@jimmylittle Thanks. I like that format for explaining a #shortcut, and I have an idea to automate (at least partially) the splitting, but I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel 😅
Nice to see a couple of new #actions in the 17.4 #iOSBeta version of the #ShortcutsApp. The “Get Orientation” one is particularly welcomed, as previous native workarounds for detecting the device orientation in a #shortcut stopped working in #iOS17. While there are 3rd party apps with additional #shortcuts actions, they often fly under the radar for most users.
I just found out you can middle-click the create tab button of a browser and it will search for the text in the clipboard?
Tested with Firefox and Chrom{e,ium} on Linux, could anyone test this on Windows for me? I’m curious if that’s a Linux thing or not.
#iOS 17.3 is finally here, and the #ShortcutsApp still suffers from show-stopping bugs 😓 The image shows what I have to do when I want my #shortcut to interact with the user: two “Open App” actions before any dialog, to ensure the dialog will be shown correctly. Every time.
Am I going to stop using #shortcuts? No. They’re still useful. But I’ll stop sharing new ones because the extra work required by the workarounds and the worsening of the use experience are not worth it.
@caseyliss@ismh@taramann I don’t cross post, but I would if I had a reason to. Mastodon is full of my internet nerd friends. Threads is full of my politics and news stuff.
I have no legit reason to cross post because I talk about totally different things on each platform. But if I had the same type of audience on both platforms, I’d totally cross post and have some convoluted @drafts action or #Shortcut to do it for me.
Just discovered a new Firefox trick: Three-finger tapping the New Tab button searches the last (or currently) selected text in the default search engine.
To quickly leave #vim you can use the following #shortcut#PressEsc to ensure you are in normal mode, then press Shift + ZZ. This will save the file and exit Vim. If you want to exit without saving, you can press Esc followed by Shift + ZQ[1][2].
This shortcut is a quick way to save and exit Vim without having to type the full command.
Moving my @obsidian vault to Obsidian Sync and off of iCloud. I never really had any issues with iCloud, but I’m looking for ways to support Obsidian’s development.
Their sync service is fast (I can see edits in near-real-time across devices) and E2E encrypted. It’s also wildly overpriced for what it does. It basically only syncs text files for $8/mo with a 10GB data cap, which is really worth about $3/mo. No server side processing, no API. Just file sync.
I’ve found that when setting up contextual Shortcuts, they quickly become cluttered with nested if statements, and they’re slow.
In the evenings, I’ve been working on an app called Contexts. It makes it incredibly easy to build conditional shortcuts based on location, time of day, day of week, and more.
Contexts can determine what actions to run (or a choice of action) when pressing the action button, or you can use the “is context active” shortcut action to do anything conditionally.
Right now, you can set one shortcut per Context, but in the coming nights, I’ll enable assigning multiple shortcuts based on context.
I created a cool #Shortcut that automatically takes you to the update page in the App Store when you open the App. 🚀 Sometimes though, you‘re hopping around between apps to checkout a few recommended Apps and don’t want to always end up on the updates page. That’s why I use #DataJar by @simonbs to store the last time the updates view was opened. ⌛️
Apple should have an initiative where all the employees dogfood Shortcuts and use it at scale to isolate all the issues, like Facebook did with their Android app.
Have them install 100+ apps & hundreds of shortcuts and perform their daily tasks through the Shortcuts app with that load.
@matthewcassinelli Every setting should have an action in #Shortcuts. Every ML feature should have an action that allows to use it in a #shortcut. Every tool in a native app should also be available as an action! And JavaScript should be able to be run headless without resorting to esoteric enchantments.
It’s frustrating to see the potential of the #ShortcutsApp wasted every year.
One year ago, we took three months off and traveled through Southern Africa! 🇿🇦🇳🇦🇧🇼🇿🇼🇿🇲🇲🇼🇹🇿
Every day, I use a #Shortcut to surface a few random photos from the day one year ago. Additionally, I utilize the @drafts action to open my journal entry of that day. It allows me to reflect on what we saw and learned. 😍
In the upcoming weeks, I'll be sharing some photos from that incredible trip. Stay tuned! 🤩
@ehler Thanks for sharing it. I had something similar but it was too complicated. That URL has allowed me to simplify my “Current Song to Apple Music Link” #shortcut quite a bit 🙂