By letting you automate frequent or cumbersome tasks, Shortcuts has become a productivity favorite on Mac.
Send a stock response in Mail, open every note with a specific tag in Notes, or switch on your smart light bulbs. You can also automate across multiple apps to, say, batch-edit photos, move text from your writing app into a page-layout app, or open every app and document you need to start your workday. You can even choose how each window is arranged.
The Gallery is filled with helpful, ready-to-run shortcuts.
And with desktop widgets in macOS Sonoma, you can add any shortcut—or folder of shortcuts—to your desktop for instant access. Just click a shortcut in a widget to run it!
To get started, launch the Shortcuts app and follow these tips. Then try them out with the apps below.
Start with the Gallery
In the Gallery, you’ll find ready-to-use shortcuts to get started with. For example, Split Screen 2 Apps arranges app windows to make multitasking easier. Bulk Tag Notes adds tags to multiple notes at once. Turn Text Into Audio converts a text file or pasted text into an audio file you can listen to anywhere. And Rename Files does just what the name suggests, letting you add or replace text in filenames.
Whether you add or create a shortcut on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, it’ll sync across all your devices and appear under All Shortcuts.
Create and customize
Ready to create your own shortcut or tailor an existing one to your workflows? Use the Mac-native editor in the Shortcuts app. Drag actions within a shortcut to reorder them, or drag a new action from the list on the right to add it. Quick tip: The Next Action Suggestions feature (under Categories > Suggestions) recommends a next building block for your shortcut, based on the blocks you’ve already added.
The editor shows potential actions to add to a shortcut.
Integrate Automator and AppleScript
Have existing Automator workflows you can’t live without? Just drag one into the Shortcuts app to convert it to a shortcut! The most popular Automator actions have also been integrated into Shortcuts, including those that run AppleScript and shell scripts.
Access your shortcuts everywhere
For quick access to any shortcut in macOS Sonoma, add a Shortcuts widget to your desktop: Control-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Edit Widgets; then drag a Shortcuts widget to the desired location.
Or add any shortcut to Share menus, your menu bar, the Quick Actions menu in the Finder, or the Touch Bar: Open the shortcut in the Shortcuts app, click the Shortcut Details button (which looks like three control sliders), and check the appropriate boxes. Of course, all your shortcuts are also accessible via Spotlight search or with your voice using Siri.
Share your shortcuts
Sharing a shortcut is as easy as sending a link using the standard share button. When you receive a link shared by someone else, simply follow the prompts to add that shortcut to your Mac.
Check out these Mac favorites that work with Shortcuts:
