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Apple’s Shortcuts app is getting a huge upgrade in iOS 26 and macOS 26 — here’s how it will help you
You may not know it, but there’s an app built right into your iPhone, iPad, and Mac that can supercharge your experience using all those products — and it’s about to get even more powerful.
That app is Shortcuts, and it lets you automate tasks on your devices, even across apps. You can have it do everything from a simple job of creating a GIF of a Live Photo to a complex system that lets you annotate a podcast as you’re recording it, and way, way more.
You build these workflows in the Shortcuts app by selecting actions and stringing them together: passing information from, say, the clipboard and having the system scan any text in the image, and then overlay it on an image you specify in order to create a meme. With this year’s updates to Apple’s platforms previewed at WWDC 2025, Shortcuts is able to do even more, including leveraging Apple Intelligence features and automating actions on the Mac.
That will make this automation tool even more versatile and able to handle more complex tasks than ever before—even if it still has some flaws that could stand addressing.