WWDC: Apple’s Shortcuts makes a grab at AI

Next week, we should have a clear view of what Apple already knows it is rolling out at this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). At the moment, expectations are low, but one updated feature could make a major difference to some people’s workflow: Shortcuts are expected to get much smarter.

Shortcuts to AI? Not really, but helpful all the same

Shortcuts help you automate tasks on Apple devices. Created inside the Shortcuts app, they let you mix and match different actions from across your applications and services. These things can work across all your devices, be combined together, automated, or initiated through Siri. While these arguably do some of the same things you’d get from within Automator on the Mac (thanks to Sal Soghoian’s decades of work), they have the advantage of also working across iPhones and iPads.

The disadvantage? Many still find the process of stringing together these shortcut scripts a little logically challenging, partly because the nature of these scripts is expressed in a language different than the one people use. 

This is, I think, how Apple intends to improve Shortcuts at WWDC, when we’re told it will finally introduce something it’s been working on to make things more approachable through use of artificial intelligence. Specifically, the company could place more focus on its plans to make the Apple Intelligence features it already provides available within Shortcuts. 

The latter might mean (and remember, this is speculation) you would be able to do more than simply send a website link to someone using the command, “Send this website to Sandra.” You might also be able to send a nice summary of what that site contains, perhaps with a relevant Genmoji to make your email punchy. 

Towards a new user interface

We’ll learn next week how Apple intends to do this integration. It is possible the company will only be able to navigate part of the journey, given all the insider reports detailing problems connecting its new AI systems with Apple’s legacy ones. All the same, the general idea seems to be that rather than figuring out how to describe your desired effect in an unfamiliar Shortcuts language, you should be able to string the services together using natural speech. 

Apple’s not unique in this; Microsoft Copilot does something similar. But in tandem with Apple’s extensive accessibility tools, smarter Shortcuts might deliver something profound for a lot of users.

It’s not just about accessibility, either. The promise of being able to combine Shortcuts using natural language, and for those Shortcuts to be able to levy a sequence of features from across Apple’s operating system and compatible apps (including third parties that support Shortcuts), is huge. 

It means that the applications and tools you use become things that can be selected and combined together using voice, text, or even conceivably gesture. Think about how this could change someone’s life who needs to use voice control on their Mac. Then think on how it makes for Mac-style features on visionOS. 

Dramatically, there is a missing piece.

Where’s the context?

One thing we’re not hearing much about so far is how and when Apple finally hopes to deploy contextual awareness in Apple Intelligence. The company announced this last year, but as we all know, hasn’t yet brought this to market. All the best informed Apple speculators predict Apple won’t introduce much that’s new in Apple Intelligence at WWDC, and previous claims have said the contextual part may not emerge until next year. Apple hasn’t said much at all. 

However, if you use your imagination, breath deeply, close your eyes just a little and squint a bit, you might be able to glimpse at how contextually-savvy Apple Intelligence could combine with Siri Shortcuts to give you the ability to do amazing work on any screen.

While working on a document, you might summarize it and send it as a PDF to a collaborator for review with a few spoken words, for example – just by staring at what you want to send. You might even request an alert once your collaborator is next online, so you can follow this up. 

We’ll wait and see how this is all eventually applied, but it seems that the WWDC-souped-up-Shortcuts in combination with contextual Siri (whenever that ships) could together unleash a whole set of new ways of working. In doing so, they also unleash a more flexible user interface suitable for deployment across a multitude of devices, including visionOS devices. 

That is, of course, where the confluence of all these technologies is really going: Macs you wear like sunglasses that enable you to wrap tech augmentation deep within your day.

Sounds great, but you’ll probably have to wait

All of which would be more interesting if it were what we’re going to get at WWDC. All the same, that doesn’t mean we’ll get nothing, and with the direction of travel visible we must look deeply at what we do get, as it will reveal just where Apple is on this journey. Solarium may come across as little more than eye candy, but perhaps vision is going to be the most important component to the future of every operating system, not just the Mac.

In the end, the jam we are promised is coming might well taste better for the wait.

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