In iOS 27, when you open the Shortcuts app, a text box appears. There, you can use natural language to describe the action you want an app to take. The app also gives some helpful examples of shortcuts to describe if you’re not sure where to start.
To see the full list of automation triggers, tap the + button at the bottom of the screen, and then hit Edit on the top-right corner of the new shortcut-creation screen. Then tap Automation in blue, and you’ll see a list of all the trigger options for your device. When you know what you want your phone to do, swipe down to partially dismiss that menu, tap the Siri button on the top-right corner where the Edit button was, and type what you want to happen into the text box.
Though shortcuts are now much simpler to create, they aren’t foolproof. Complicated, multistep commands aren’t always captured as intended or are completed in a different way than you intended. The function can also miss shortcut-enabled features from third-party apps, depending on how you phrased your prompt.
I’ve found that the most reliable way to word your command is to focus on the outcome you want, rather than on how you think it should be done. As with many coding languages, you often have multiple ways to accomplish the same goal in the Shortcuts app, and the flow of actions in your head might not match up with how the algorithm implements your idea.
One innocuous example is a shortcut that closes Instagram after 15 minutes. I wrote: “Set a 15-minute timer when I open Instagram, and close Instagram when the timer concludes.” But as it turned out, the automation didn’t need a timer from the Clock app, since it has its own timing system, so instead it set an extra Clock timer to go off at the same time Instagram closed. I was able to delete the extra timer by toggling to the Edit button and removing the associated action. You can edit any shortcut if it doesn’t behave the way you want it to.
