Smart Ways to Use iOS 26's New Shortcuts

iOS 26 has brought some cool updates to the Shortcuts app, making it even more useful. These updates are powered by Apple Intelligence, which adds new features like LLM-based actions. This means you can automate tasks that used to take a lot of time, like transcribing audio, tracking food, and even getting news summaries. The Shortcuts app is already a great tool for automating tasks on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But with iOS 26, it's become even more powerful. Apple has added new actions and improved the shortcut editor, making it easier to create custom shortcuts. Plus, there's a growing community of users who share their own creative shortcuts for free. Here are some of the most useful shortcuts you can try out: 1. Summarize Doc AI: This shortcut gives you a quick summary of any document. You can use it with different LLM models, like ChatGPT, On-Device, and Cloud. Just share the document and let the shortcut do the rest. 2. Brainstorm Ideas AI: If you like to think out loud, this shortcut is perfect for you. It turns your spoken ideas into a formatted note, complete with a bullet point list and a full transcript. 3. Food Scanner to Health: Keeping track of your diet just got easier. This shortcut scans barcodes and pictures of food to give you nutritional information. It even calculates your daily macros. 4. Save for Later: Never lose track of interesting links again. This shortcut saves the contents of websites, social media posts, and more to Apple Notes. You can even organize them into specific folders. 5. AI Transcribe and Summary: Need to transcribe an audio file? This shortcut does it for you and provides a summary and key points. It works with different LLM models, but ChatGPT is best for longer transcripts. 6. Transcribe Latest Memo GPT: This shortcut transcribes your latest voice memo and provides a detailed summary. Keep in mind that the iPhone and iPad versions have a 20-minute limit, while the Mac version can handle hours of audio. 7. Daily Screen Time Report: Want to know how much time you're spending on your favorite apps? This shortcut gives you a list of your most-used apps and their usage time. You can even customize it to pull activity for a specific day, week, or month. 8. Describe Image AI: Apple Intelligence can recognize and describe images. This shortcut is a must-have for users with visual impairments. Just select an image and let the shortcut tell you what it sees. 9. Are People in This Photo? : This shortcut scans your photos and tells you if there are people in them. You can even set it up to automatically sort photos with and without people into different albums. 10. News Report AI: Start your day with a summary of the latest news. This shortcut pulls news from RSS feeds and saves them to an Apple note. You can even automate it to run at specific times of the day. 11. Football Schedule AI: Never miss a game with this shortcut. It looks up the schedules of your favorite teams and creates a list of their upcoming games. 12. Ultimate Movie to Note AI: Finding a movie to watch just got easier. This shortcut searches for movies, shows where they're streaming, and creates an Apple note with the movie poster and a link to watch it. 13. Random Wallpaper from Folder: Tired of the same old wallpaper? This shortcut automatically changes your iPhone wallpaper to a random one from a folder of your choosing. You can even automate it to run at specific times of the day. These shortcuts are just a taste of what iOS 26 has to offer. With Apple Intelligence, the possibilities are endless. So, which shortcuts will you be using in your daily routine?