This App Lets You Create Automations Your Mac Usually Doesn’t Support

To create automations using Apple's Shortcuts app on your Mac, you're dependent on Apple's support for various actions. While Shortcuts supports an array of useful actions, some aren't in the app yet, such as clearing all notifications or quitting all apps. If you want to add a few more helpful actions to your Mac automations, consider Shortcutie ($6), a powerful extension for Shortcuts that lets you execute actions Apple doesn't yet support.

Shortcutie itself has no interface. Once installed, all of its actions will appear in Apple's Shortcuts app on your Mac. To access them, install the app, open Shortcuts, and select Shortcutie from the Apps tab in the right pane. The app requires Accessibility permissions to function, which is necessary because macOS's strict sandboxing rules prevent apps from running many of the actions this app supports. (Note: only grant apps you trust, like Shortcutie, this permission.) Once you grant it access, you'll find new, useful tools in Shortcuts, such as changing your default browser, clearing all notifications, hiding all windows, quitting all apps, and checking if your screen is being recorded, mirrored, or shared.

macOS supports all of these actions, but they aren't available in Shortcuts, which prevents you from creating automation routines around these actions. Once you have Shortcutie, you can add these triggers to your shortcuts and execute complex automations that your Mac doesn't otherwise support. Don't forget that the Shortcuts app appears in the menu bar and you can run automations directly from the menu bar, too. That can make it much quicker and easier to run certain actions, such as the dreaded "clear all notifications." When you combine this app with Shortery, which lets you run Mac automations based on various triggers, you can automate pretty much everything.

Credit: Pranay Parab

Without Shortcutie, you can open the Notification Center and clear notifications, but macOS doesn't always show the clear all button, forcing you to clear notifications one-by-one. With Shortcutie, I set up a simple automation, and in two clicks, I'm now able to clear all alerts. Similarly, quitting all apps is quite easy with the action added by this app. You normally don't need to do this, but if your Mac has slowed down due to a memory leak or high ambient temperatures, Shortcutie's quit all apps action offers a one-click method to reduce the burden on your computer. Here are some more useful actions from the app:

• Empty Trash

• Eject all disks

• Clear recent lists (from menus)

• Set grayscale mode

• Show/hide desktop widgets

• Get URL and title of the active browser tab

At the time of writing, Shortcutie supports 29 actions, and the developer, Sindre Sorhus, has promised to add more. The biggest concern is that Shortcutie relies on private APIs to access these actions and those can change at any point. The developer has promised to keep a tab on these changes and to support the app, but it does leave the app vulnerable to losing features. Regular updates should be able to fix any issues that may crop up in the future, but it's something to keep in mind.

I'm not worried though, knowing the developer: Sorhus has created over 50 apps and utilities for Mac and iPhone (Lifehacker has covered many), so I expect he will continue to keep Shortcutie updated.

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