Discover the Potential of iOS 26 through 3 Remarkable AI Shortcuts You Should Experiment With Immediately
Apple Introduces Powerful AI Features to Shortcuts App
Apple has unveiled a suite of new AI-driven features in the Shortcuts app, available in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26. These features provide users with advanced text and image processing capabilities, directly integrating Apple’s Foundation Models into automated workflows.
The Use Model action grants direct access to Apple’s Foundation Models, allowing users to integrate AI within their shortcuts. This feature supports AI-assisted tasks such as responding to queries or generating content based on prompts within workflows.
In addition, Apple offers a suite of Writing Tools actions. These include Proofread Text, Rewrite Text, Summarize Text, Adjust Tone of Text, Make List from Text, and Make Table from Text. These empower users to enhance, condense, or transform textual content automatically in their shortcuts.
Another exciting addition is Image Playground, which allows users to generate AI-driven images by typing prompts, producing cartoons, sketches, and illustrations. These generated images can be integrated into apps like Messages, Keynote, or workflows that use Shortcuts.
The new features also include Visual Intelligence, enhancing image understanding and interaction. Users can work with screenshots to identify objects, perform targeted image searches, or query information using ChatGPT. It features Highlight to Search for isolating objects in images, supports identification of works of art, books, landmarks, and natural landmarks, and allows quick actions like adding event information extracted from images to the calendar.
Moreover, these features integrate seamlessly with core apps such as Freeform, Notes, and iWork apps. New actions for adding files to Freeform and Notes, exporting from iWork apps in the background, and advanced message searching complement the Apple Intelligence model features.
Apple provides practical workflow examples, such as the “Leftover Recipes” shortcut, which uses AI to generate recipes from available ingredients, demonstrating real-world applications of these intelligence features within shortcuts triggered by Siri or the Action Button.
To create a shortcut that turns a list of web-based ingredients into a table and drops it in a new Note, a user can follow these steps:
- Create a new Shortcut.
- Add the Get Details of Safari Web Page action.
- Add the Make Table from Text action.
- Add the Create Note action, with the Use Model Response variable set as the Content field.
The new Create image action in the iOS 26 version of the Shortcuts app can be used to generate an image of the dish being made. This can be prompted by a separate Get Details of Safari Web Page action that retrieves the Name from the Shortcuts Input.
These Apple Intelligence features significantly augment automation in the Shortcuts app by enabling smart text manipulation, AI-assisted image creation and analysis, and direct use of large language models in user workflows, all while offering options for privacy-conscious on-device or cloud-based processing. For up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews on these features, follow Tom's Guide on Google News.
- The new features in Apple's Shortcuts app, such as the Use Model action and the Image Playground, allow users to leverage advanced technology, including smartphones and gadgets, to integrate AI within their shortcuts and generate AI-driven images.
- With the suite of Writing Tools actions and the Create image action, users can now automate tasks like transforming textual content, generating images based on prompts, and even creating recipes from available ingredients, demonstrating the integration of technology and smartphones in real-world applications.
