Issue #79 | Subscribe

Return. By Fedor Barkhatov.

I've been using the iOS Shortcuts app quite a lot recently, and it has helped me save so much time and effort.

Especially with my work on curating this newsletter.

Here's a shortcut called Add App For Review that has quickly become my favourite:

This shortcut lives in my phone's share sheet and does the following when I tap on it:

  1. Receives the URL of the app website being shared
  2. Cleans up any analytics or other URL parameters by splitting the URL text from the ? character and choosing the first part (the clean URL)
  3. Adds the clean URL to my Todoist Inbox under a section called Apps for Review

Before creating this shortcut, I used to manually do all these steps for every app webpage I saved for review.

Tedious even when saving a single app. Imagine how boring it was when repeated for hundreds of apps.

If you use any Apple device, iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, the Shortcuts app is a fantastic tool to speed up tiny workflows in your life.

Many iOS and macOS apps now support some form of shortcut action, and you can leverage them to connect your tools more efficiently.

Here's how:

  1. Pick a workflow that feels repetitive and time-consuming
  2. See if the Shortcuts app supports the apps you use in your workflow
  3. Visualise your workflow into a series of steps that'll form your shortcut actions

If you need more inspiration, you can check a variety of premade shortcuts in the Gallery section of the app:

Open some shortcuts from the list and see the action steps to understand better how these shortcuts are configured and how you can adapt your workflows into easy shortcuts.

Once you have an arsenal of shortcuts tailored to your workflow, you'll be amazed at how easy they make some of your daily tasks.

Try it out.

Now:

Shortcuts will dramatically boost your productivity by automating manual jobs. But how about amping up your productivity in other tasks?

That's where Sunsama might help.

To explain more about this app and how it can help you, here are a few words from:

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Unsend your last message within 15 seconds on the Slack macOS app.
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