Shortcuts is a very useful application and is now available on Mac OS Monterey. We’ve been enjoying the benefits of iOS automation using Shortcuts for quite some time now. So I made a video showing how to put together a shortcut in the Shortcuts app on my Mac in the beta version of Mac OS Monterey. There were a couple of actions I wanted a use from Drafts which didn’t work. Drafts had recently just been updated to give us these actions but Monterey is not quite ready for them.
I was still able to create a useful shortcut allowing me to collect information from whatever application by accessing the share sheet. I can take text from a browser or from a PDF document, or from whatever document I like and send it to a collection document. I’m in particular looking for ideas for new videos. I might see something interesting in the web and all I have to do is to select the text and choose share. From there I can get the information into Craft, and when it is working Drafts all with one shortcut. On the Mac I can access shortcuts from the menu bar or from the Services Menu.
There are some improvements in the Shortcuts application in this new round of operating system upgrades. When you add the action to make it work from the share sheet you also get an option to have it do something else if there’s nothing coming in. This means I can have a brilliant idea for making a video and run the shortcut even when I don’t have text selected. There will be a text dialogue pop up and asked me what my idea is and send it to my YouTube video ideas document in Craft and Drafts.