I set up an automation to "reduce white point OFF" at night and back ON in the morning, so if I pick up my phone in the middle of the night my eyes don't burn
Not an automation, technically, but maybe it could be: I have an AppleScript that is set to run every hour that grabs any files on my desktop that have been there longer than a day, and puts them in a dated folder in an archive folder. Same for my downloads.
I do this with my Downloads folder using Hazel[1]. I have an “Archive” folder split into subfolder of screenshots, pdfs, videos etc.. After a month in the downloads folder, Hazel moves everything into the Archive subfolder automatically, sorted by year and month.
Yep, I've been recommended Hazel before, but I like the control I get with the AppleScript. In particular I like the higher cadence of sweeps, mine does my desktop, downloads, and documents folders, and mine will ignore a file if it has a label, so I can easily keep things if I want.
I have a cron job taking a picture of my desktop four times per minute into a dated folder structure. It allows me to zoom back in time (days out weeks back) to figure out what I was doing at a particular time or if I was showing someone a particular bit of code or something like that.
Check out Rewind.ai! I used a similar app (Capturer.app) to do this automatically, and have since switched to Rewind - it's much better for my purposes.
Podcasts in the shower: on bluetooth speaker connect, add 15 mins to the current time, set focus mode that ignores everyone until 15 mins later, resume podcasts playlist wherever it was left off. Only annoyance with this shortcut is it’ll pop up a notification to approve running the shortcut when it detects the speaker has been turned on.
I have those cheap paper nfc stickers hidden in random spots around the house and we have the same shortcuts setup on our phones so we can add dog food/loo roll/cleaning supplies etc etc to the shared shopping list in todo.
Similarly i like being able to tap my phone on the way out my home office to run script over ssh and shut everything down, turn off the lights and plugs etc
sort of an automation, but I install all my favorite apps with brew and then use brew again (brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask -g) to update everything
I was bored, so I used my parent's work iPhone to make a shortcut that grabs Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, plus definitions. It's based on the one Apple pre-made, but sends notifications instead of that web preview thing. It's not automated (so my parents wouldn't know), and runs via a home screen widget.
Not a specific automation, but the ability to run automations upon receiving an email lets you do some very cool stuff. For instance, I forward emails to a particular alias of mine, which kicks off a shortcut that adds the email to my reminders. But since you have access to the email body you could really do anything.
1. Switch off wifi, bluetooth, enable battery save mode at night and re-enable them in the morning
2. Switch off mobile data when connecting to my home wifi
3. Automatically enable and disable orientation lock when entering the photos app
MacOS: Combine several PDFs using Automator. Not spectacular, but always handy
iOS: Activate low power mode when battery drops below 95% - neat workaround since there is no way to have low power mode turned on permanently. Also, activate Airplane Mode from 1 am to 6 pm to save energy.
Actually, this is indeed possible. Create an automation with the trigger "Low Power mode switched off" and add a single "turn low power mode on". Every time iOS switches it off, it should automatically retoggle back on.
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[1]: https://www.noodlesoft.com/
I've made changes since then and I haven't documented them :-/ I'll try to find the time to write it up.
I have those cheap paper nfc stickers hidden in random spots around the house and we have the same shortcuts setup on our phones so we can add dog food/loo roll/cleaning supplies etc etc to the shared shopping list in todo.
Similarly i like being able to tap my phone on the way out my home office to run script over ssh and shut everything down, turn off the lights and plugs etc
Bonus: I went the extra mile and wrote a script that bootstraps my entire setup: https://github.com/fastily/autobots/blob/master/macOS/setup/...
I was using text files before as well to manage it.
iOS: Activate low power mode when battery drops below 95% - neat workaround since there is no way to have low power mode turned on permanently. Also, activate Airplane Mode from 1 am to 6 pm to save energy.
Actually, this is indeed possible. Create an automation with the trigger "Low Power mode switched off" and add a single "turn low power mode on". Every time iOS switches it off, it should automatically retoggle back on.