by Jason Snell
Fixing Southwest calendar items with Shortcuts
I mentioned Dr. Drang’s scripts to improve calendar files downloaded from the Southwest Airlines website this week on Upgrade. I use these in combination with Hazel to create calendar events with more informative labels and check-in alerts.
In a fun bit of follow-up, Drang has posted his iOS user automation to accomplish the same thing, namely a more readable and useful version of Southwest’s default ICS file download:
Turns out there’s an easier solution: add the default calendar entries that Southwest provides and then fiddle with them using Shortcuts. Strictly speaking, Shortcuts doesn’t allow you to edit a calendar entry in place, but you can extract information from an existing entry, change it around to create a new entry to your liking, and then delete the original.
The iOS approach to user automation is quite different than on the Mac, but in the end we get what we want, which is a calendar event that will remind you to check in 24 hours in advance.