MacStories announces Automation April, a month-long celebration of Shortcuts

Getting Started with Shortcuts (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore)

What you need to know

MacStories is kicking off a month of automation with content, a competition, and more.
More than 30 new shortcuts will be shared by the MacStories team.

MacStories has today announced a month-long automation event that will a host of new shortcuts be shared with the community alongside a new competition to celebrate the website's 13th birthday.

Automation April will run for the whole month of April, as the name suggests. Part of the festivities will see Federico Viticci share a new collection of 30 shortcuts across a period of three weeks while Shortcuts-specific content will also be added to the site. John Voorhees will also be sharing new shortcuts including a "custom Watch Later system" that is sure to be worth watching out for.

I will be releasing 30 shortcuts for free on MacStories across three weeks. These shortcuts span all kinds of categories and levels of complexity: there will be shortcuts that take advantage of new features in iOS 15.4 for Translate and Live Text; there will be Mac-specific shortcuts; there will be shortcuts comprised of just a few actions that do one thing well and others that will be a bit more complex. All of them will be released for free on the MacStories Shortcuts Archive; look for the first installment with 10 shortcuts early next week.

Special episodes of the AppStories podcast will also be released, while a competition will see people enter their own shortcuts to be judged. Those entering will be in the running to win a Stream Deck XL and Analogue Pocket console, with individual categories covering Best productivity shortcut, Best media shortcut, Best HomeKit shortcut, and Best Mac-specific shortcut. Those judging entries will include developers, Shortcuts experts, and Apple journalists.

Shortcuts On Mac (Image credit: Bryan M. Wolfe / iMore)

Other aspects include dedicated Discord channels and workshops related to Shortcuts as well as perks specific to the MacStories membership tiers.

As Shortcuts continues to support more features, apps, and APIs and grow into the best iPhone automation tool to date, it's also one that lives a double life. One of those lives is lived as an app that lets people do simpler things like turn on Low Power Mode when their battery is below 50%. The other life is as an advanced automation system with hooks into almost anything you can do on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. That's where Viticci and MacStories do their best work, and it'll be fascinating to see everything that's planned for Automation April. Not least that cache of new shortcuts that is going to be released.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.