Shortcuts vs Normal Siri

So, I am a little late to the game, but I set up a Shortcut for “Lumos“ to turn on the flashlight and “Nox“ to turn it off. It works, but takes several seconds to activate. On the other hand, I simply say, “Hey Siri, turn on flashlight,“ and it turns on instantly. Why would anyone bother with the Shortcut?

If you just want to turn on the flashlight there is absolutely no need to use a Siri shortcut. On the other hand, if you want to have fun using individual commands like your “Lumos” or “Nox” this can only be done using a shortcut. It might not be effective but it sure is fun to do.

Things Siri understands natively will work fast and natively just talking to Siri. Shortcuts come in handy when you use stuff that does not work natively just with regular Siri capabilities. Shortcuts are a hook into every app to do whatever the developer enables you to do. The shortcuts transform Siri into your personal Siri. You do not need to depend onto Apples built-in Siri commands but you can create your own.

And, of course, you can combine complex actions from several apps into a single shortcut workflow. For instance, you could use the flashlight as an indicator that a workflow has finished:

  1. “Hey Siri, start my amazing whatever workflow!”

  2. Action 1 is being executed.

  3. Action 2 is being executed.

  4. Action 3 is being executed.

  5. Done… Ok, the flashlight is being turned on.

  6. Waiting 3 seconds.

  7. The flashlight is being turned off.

Or you could create an SOS shortcut that switches your flashlight on and off doing morse code (using the wait commands in combination with several flashlight commands)… :wink:

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Absolutely! I agree 100%!

There is a reason, though: Otherwise those Siri actions would not be available to be a part of a more complex worlflow like with the flashlight in the example above.

So, this duplication is needed in some cases.