IOS – How to automatically trigger a iOS Shortcut (based on location/calendar)

iosiphoneshortcutsiri

I've done a lot of research and it looks like the only way to run Apple iOS shortcuts is manually – i.e. you have to manually do the trigger – either by pressing a button, getting Siri to do it (by 'manually asking') or by (manually) getting another app to run it. I've yet to be able to get another app to run it automatically (yes, I'm sure this is to do with security/privacy implications, but if it's based on a shortcut that's only on my phone, then I'm happy with the security/privacy).

I've looked at getting IFTTT to run the trigger (which it can do – for example, based on my location, or based on the start of an event in my Google Calendar), however the 'most' I can then do is to get that trigger to run an IFTTT Rich Notification on my iPhone – yes I can then click on that notification pop-up (which launches a shortcut via shortcuts://open-shortcut?name=[name]), but that still relies on me clicking the shortcut.

A couple of people have run iOS shortcuts as the trigger for an IFTTT action, but I'm trying to do this the other way around.

So what I'd like to be able to do is this:

  • run an iOS shortcut when I leave a location
  • run it with no manual intervention

Best Answer

Unfortunately this is not possible (yet). It's a known limitation of Shortcuts in its current 2.0 implementation.

Federico Viticci mentioned this in his (epic) iOS 12 review as something he'd like to see in the future:

https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-review/12/#content