Pushcut is my favorite of the many available notification apps/services. I use it to improve upon HomeKit’s limited notification granularity. I also use it for notifying me of events on my Linux server, like a site update deployment. There are myriad possibilities.Also: ignore the one-star reviews from people mad about the pricing model. I think by now any intelligent person who’s paid attention to the ios app economy knows it’s hard for indie developers to make enough money to sustain a project, and personally I’d rather the developers of the apps I use and love not decide they can’t afford to keep putting time into something that’s not sustainable for them.It’s a great app, I use its functionality multiple times per day, and I hope it continues to be viable for the developer.

This app has the ability to solve major issues with Siri Shortcuts and automations which is why I was willing to pay almost $40 for a lifetime license. However the main feature that most people would want/need requires an additional monthly/annual subscription on top of the lifetime license. Scheduling a one-time server execution/action for a specific date and time should not be behind an additional pay wall for people who already purchased lifetime licenses. Nearly every other “pro” feature of the lifetime license in this app is able to be accomplished by other workarounds or natively in iOS. The one problem it could actually solve, is deceptively locked behind an expensive monthly IAP. 🙄

I know a developer should have limitations when it comes to needing money, but it does everything that I need when it comes to making basic notifications. Only suggestion that I have is that there should be in is a help section. At first, I didn’t know how to push the notification out, but I know how to now from using your site. Please be sure to include a help section for those who don’t know how to instead of either writing a bad review or doing one extra step and have to go to your site to do so. Great app though! Very convenient now so I can automatically backup shortcuts everyday :)

Tested it on my phone and it worked great, I was able to trigger shortcuts using the URL. However, when I moved the server to a dedicated device, device specific shortcuts didn’t run properly. For example, I have a shortcut that disconnects all airplay speakers from my device and set playback to my device. This runs great when server is on my phone, but when the server is on another device it runs that shortcut on the server device. That device isn’t playing anything though so the music is still playing through the speakers from my phone.

HomeKit’s automation feature is still a puzzle and somewhat limited. PushCut picks up where Apple fell short. The notification feature is really capable when combine with Shortcuts and Home App’s automations. But, the learning curve is pretty steep. PushCut should have built-in animated diagrams explaining how all this work and I can bet that if they do this, this app’s user base would easily double in no time. They really tried to incorporate the same UI language Apple uses with Shortcuts, which is very good. But, this type of “configuration” language is very limiting to the normal user who needs to do quite a lot of tests, trial and error, in order to find out the real power of being able to automate shortcuts. I only expect things to get better form here.

Location-based background triggers only work if you have a dedicated iOS device to run as a server. $18/yr for premium would be fine, but that requirement is expensive and feels unnecessary: why does my phone need to connect to another device to run a shortcut that will toggle alarms (as in my phone clock, not security) off or on based on location?---Response: Unless I'm missing something, without a dedicated device, the location-based triggers only send a notification that you have to interact with in order to run the shortcut. That's the same functionality as the Shortcuts app, which makes this superfluous for my use case.