Personal Automations

How to automatically silence your Apple Watch based on location

Sandy Writtenhouse ∙ February 11, 2021

While your Apple Watch makes some nice and useful sounds, you don’t always want to hear them. You may have sounds for alerts, reminders, or to let you know the time. But if you’re heading someplace where those sounds can annoy others, you probably want to silence them.

So that you never forget to enable Theater Mode or Silent Mode, you can set up shortcuts to turn these on automatically based on your location. Here, we’ll show you how to create these automations for your Apple Watch in the Shortcuts app.

How to automatically change your Apple Watch face based on time or location

Sandy Writtenhouse ∙ March 2, 2021

Automations can be wonderful. You can make things happen with a one-time action and have them repeat. And with the Shortcuts app on iPhone you can set up personal automations for your Apple Watch.

One such automation you may find handy is changing your Watch face based on time of day, location, or action. For instance, you might like a certain face in the morning as your day is starting and a different one as your evening begins. As another example, you might prefer a particular face for when you head to the office and another when you arrive home.

How to use the new automation triggers in Shortcuts

Sandy Writtenhouse ∙ September 16, 2020

Automations in the Shortcuts app give you awesome ways to make tasks simpler. With automations, you can do things like open an app, play music, or make a phone call, all automatically based on triggers you set up.

The Shortcuts app offers both personal and home automations to make your life a little easier. And with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, you have even more triggers available. Here, we’ll show you how to use some of these new personal automation triggers in Shortcuts.

How to assign your favorite apps or custom automation shortcuts to the stock Lock screen and Control Center toggles in iOS 13

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 27, 2019

Did you know that iOS 13 makes it possible to create some pretty neat system-wide app automations for your iPhone or iPad, right in the Shortcuts app? With this awesome improvement, power users are able to do things that weren't possible before, such as have iOS automatically open a third-party app upon tapping the Camera shortcut on the Lock screen or modify Control Center toggles so they launch custom rather than default apps.