← Marc Hummel
iOS Shortcuts

I use the Apple Shortcuts app to make my life easier. I run them on my HomePod, Apple Watch, and iPhone. These examples show my innate sense of “curiosity, tinkering and hacking”—and they are cool.

1. Talk to Claude instead of Siri

Use case

HomePods sound amazing. The original pair I bought in 2018 still work great. However, Siri is not a good voice assistant.

Solution

I created a Shortcut so I can talk to Claude. I can yell into the air at home (or say to my Apple Watch, Hey Siri, Ask Claude), and it will connect to the Claude API and tell me the answer.

Here’s the setup:

API request headers
anthropic-version  2023-06-01
content-type       application/json
x-api-key          [my Claude api key]
Body
messages     [the input]
model        claude-3-haiku-20240307
max_tokens   255
temperature  0.1
system       You are a voice assistant. Give brief, direct answers.

2. How much coffee do I need?

Use case

I try to make the best coffee possible at home. I carefully weigh the beans and water every night according to my preferred ratio so it’s ready to go in the morning. But at the end of the coffee bag, there’s always a little bit left over. I don’t want to waste the coffee or mix it with coffee from a different bag.

Solution

I made a Shortcut that asks how much coffee I have left in the bag and tells me the weight of water I need to prepare (in grams). I run this on my Apple Watch when I’m in the kitchen.

Note: I set the ratio as a variable so I can easily update the Shortcut if I ever decide to change my ratio. An example of how: 1) I always have an eye toward scalability and 2) I try to create clean setups.
Download this Shortcut →

3. Is it hoodie weather?

Use case

This might be my favorite, most-used Shortcut ever. When I’m heading outside for a walk or a bike ride, I don’t really want to know the temperature; I want to know what I should wear.

Solution

First, we get the current weather conditions. We use Feels Like over Temperature since we want a consistent recommendation with regards to what to wear.

Then a series of IF statements tell me what to wear based on the Feels Like temperature. There are 6 possible outcomes:

  1. Very cold (<30°): Wear a hoodie and jacket and hat and mittens.
  2. Cold (30–42°): No, it’s a bit colder than that. Wear a jacket and hat and gloves.
  3. Probably hoodie weather (43–49°): Yes, and maybe more.
  4. Hoodie weather (49–68°): Yes, wear a hoodie—unless it’s sunny, then you might not need one.
  5. T-shirt weather (68–80°): No. Just a T-shirt will do.
  6. Hot (>80°): Nah. I recommend a T-shirt and shorts. It’s blazin’ hot out there, man. (Style note: I do not often take its advice with regards to wearing shorts.)

We also check for rain probability and wind speed and append those to the end of the recommendation.

Download this Shortcut →