what did Apple say this year about new features in Shortcuts?
Asked on 2026-08-14
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Apple said this year that Shortcuts is getting Apple Intelligence-powered improvements that make it much easier to create and use.
New features highlighted
- Describe a shortcut in natural language and Shortcuts will assemble the steps for you.
- Shortcuts can reason over your request and turn it into an automation or shortcut automatically.
- You can then tweak it by describing changes, instead of building everything manually.
- Apple also highlighted a new intelligent action in Shortcuts that can tap directly into Apple Intelligence models, along with familiar actions like:
- Writing Tools
- Image Playground
- In the dedicated Shortcuts session, Apple also mentioned:
- new automation types
- the Use Model action
- storage, which lets you persist data between runs of a shortcut
In short
Apple’s message was that Shortcuts is becoming more approachable, more powerful, and more intelligent, with Apple Intelligence helping users build automations just by describing what they want.
Keynote
Don’t miss the exciting reveal of the latest Apple software and technologies.
What’s new in Shortcuts
Explore techniques to build powerful shortcuts using your app’s content. New automations unlock additional ways to integrate your app with the system. Refine how your App Entity is presented to LLMs using the new “Use Model” transcript feature. Store rich information from your app inside shortcuts that is synced across devices. Learn how to combine these features to create intelligent, powerful automations that integrate seamlessly with content and features from your app.
Develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents
Learn about how building App Intents that make actions available and work best with the new features in Shortcuts and Spotlight on Mac. We’ll show you how your actions combine in powerful ways with the new Apple Intelligence actions available in the Shortcuts app. We’ll deep-dive into how the new “Use Model” action works, and how it interacts with your app’s entities. And we’ll discuss how to use the App Intents APIs to make your actions available in Spotlight.