Skip to content

Shortcuts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortcuts_(Apple)

Visual scripting application (programming adjacent) by Apple to create marcos running on their Apple devices to complete or automate tasks. Started through the University of Michigan Hackathon in 2014.

I run my automated texts through there! Earlier, was recommended to use Twilio. But costs like 1 cent per text!

Tracking

There is no documentation for tracking shortcut apps.

However, apple did build a cli tool to track them via putil. "Hackers" have made their own documentation for this command as well :), https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Plutil.

NOTE: Actually shortcuts has some metadata that doesn't allow the utility to work! Need to cut down file.

But you can always referance the manpage for the cli tool:

$ man plutil
$ plutil -convert xml1 filename.plist

Shortcuts plists nest deeply and reorder on export), some people give up on meaningful diffs and instead commit the binary .shortcut as an opaque blob (git-lfs if it's large) alongside a manually maintained CHANGES.md describing what changed in each version, screenshot each major version, and let commit messages carry the actual history.

Throttle

throttled or blocked, usually well under 100 texts in a short window

eSIM/Number sharing (like Apple Watch cellular, or some carriers' multi-device plans) — this mostly relays calls/texts to a secondary device, it doesn't let a second device independently send SMS through the network as if it were the primary

Dual-SIM on the iPhone itself — doesn't help, since it's still iOS-sandboxed either way

  • AT&T - 15 SMS/minute
  • T-Mobile - 1,000 a day
  • People report: 10-30 rapid, identical-looking texts in a short window

Alternatives

Automator (seems to becoming deprioritized to shortcuts) is the traditional automation method for macOS starting in 2005. Able to run various scripting languages such as AppleScript, JavaScript, or shell scripts.

There are some external tools that allow you to write in swift that compiles to shortcut.