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Apple leveraged artificial intelligence to make its visual scripting tool, Shortcuts, easier to use in iOS 27, In a reveal shown at the WWDC 2026 event.
Shortcuts is largely designed for power users who want to automate repetitive tasks, create workflows, or set up cross-app actions. Instead, the new version of Shortcuts will allow users to type a prompt and simply describe what they want to do.
The new feature is powered by Apple Intelligence, which helps determine the meaning of a natural language description so it can build the required steps.
“Even though the process of creating these shortcuts is very powerful, it can seem complicated,” Cecilia Dantas, senior director of Home Software Product Marketing, admitted during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday.
The AI update makes Shortcuts more accessible and expands what non-technical people can do, as they will no longer need to worry about finding the right app actions or variables.
Dantas also provided an example of how this feature could be used in the real world, suggesting that users could design a shortcut that would automatically notify their partner when they leave work and give them an estimated time of arrival home.
Instead of having to figure out how to create this type of automation, users can just type a request, and Shortcuts then collect any required system and application actions. In this case, a mechanism would be created that triggers the shortcut as soon as the user leaves work — arriving at a stored address — then calculates the ETA using Apple Maps, and sends the alert via messages.
Apple notes that users can also make edits or changes by describing it. In the “Leave work” example, for example, the user can then edit it to start playing a favorite podcast, for example.
The updated version of Shortcuts will roll out with iOS 27 later this fall.
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