Since updating Shortcuts to version 2.1 I’ve been having problems running some shortcuts with Siri
- My “Good Night” shortcut which sets a HomeKit scene to turn everything off and launch the Sleep Cycle app fails to run. I get the “Running your shortcut” message but neither of the actions fire and no error is displayed. It runs fine when activated through the app and fails whether the iPhone is locked or not.
- My “Good Morning” shortcut gives a “Can’t run in this environment” error when trying to get the current location which I pass to Dark Skies. Runs fine when activated through the app and fails whether the iPhone is locked or not.
- My “Record Weight” shortcut which I setup in Workflow a few years ago gives a “There was a problem with the app” error when run through Siri. It runs fine when activated through the app and fails whether the iPhone is locked or not.
All of these Siri shortcuts where working fine in 2.0 so I was wondering in anyone-else has had any issues since upgrading?
<rant>
I’ve got a nasty feeling this is going to follow the normal Apple App development cycle.
- Introduce an update which adds some new cool features, but removes some functionality (Workflow Watch app) and introduces some bugs
- Release a fix to some of the bugs but introduce a few new ones
- Don’t touch the app for years
- Repeat
Personally based on what I’ve seen with Shortcuts I’d rather have Workflow back. Being able to trigger shortcuts with Siri is cool, or it would be if Siri could understand me. When I try and run Siri shortcuts from my HomePod or Watch my “Drank water bottle” shortcut takes half-a-dozen attempts to decide whether I said Drank, Dink, or Drunk (I can see it translate on my watch screen) before getting it right. My “Add Today Reminder” shortcut instists telling me I don’t have a “Des” list as it interprets the command as ‘Add to Des Reminders”, and my “Start Coffee Reminder” shortcut usually tells me I don’t have any reminders about coffee. All of these work first time (well, most of the time) with Siri on my iPhone but the whole idea of having the Watch is that I don’t have to carry my iPhone around with me.
I used to use the Workflow watch app to trigger these shortcuts, which was a lot better when I was in a quiet office or during a meeting and wanted to record that I’d just drank a bottle of water and without having to announce it to everyone in the room.
And then there’s the obviously missing actions for Apples own apps. For example I can get Evernote to create, delete, append, and get the contents of a note, but for Apples own Notes app the only action is to create a note and there’s no actions for Apples Podcast app.
I realise this is a large update from the old Workflow app and that a few bugs are going to creep in with any update, but I’ve seen this happen to often with Apple apps I use regularly (podcasts, mail, numbers, etc) stagnate while Apples focus switches elsewhere, only I think that Shortcuts will be too tied in to iOS for a third-party replacement to be able to offer comparative features.
</rant>