Action button Siri Shortcut for your iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra
⌚️Apple Watch,📲iPhone,🔗Shortcuts,⭐️Featured
Recently I got myself the new iPhone 15 Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and these two devices have one thing in common - Action button which can be configurable. In the beginning I changed its settings on the iPhone to just open the camera and on the watch to start a workout, but after a few days my identity as a productivity guy and founder of Nozbe got the better of me. I decided to tweak this with Siri Shortcuts and create my ultimate “Action Button Shortcut” which you can get here free and adjust to your own liking:
- One Action Button Shortcut to rule them all!
- Which Siri Shortcuts are in my Action Button menu?
- How about a “virtual” Action Button on the iPad?
- Get the Action Button shortcut template and adjust it to your needs!
One Action Button Shortcut to rule them all!
My inspiration for this Shortcut came initially form John Gruber’s post where he recommended I get free Actions app for iOS, which lets me add actions that recognize if the iPhone is in horizontal, portrait or face down state. Later I watched Christopher Lawley’s video (embedded below) and got his ActionCut Shortcut as an inspiration and in the end I came up with this:
🔗 Action Button Shortcut
This is a template of my Action button and for it to work, you also need to get the free Actions app:
Step 1. Is it a Watch or an iPhone?
First it checks if the device is an Apple Watch and when it is, it launches a menu specific to the watch. If you don’t have an Apple Watch Ultra you can just ignore this.
Step 2. An iPhone in landscape - open Camera!
If it’s not a watch, it checks if it’s an iPhone and if its orientation is horizontal (landscape) - and for that it uses an action from the Actions app. It launches the camera 📸 right away. No menus, no nothing, quick camera capture. This saves me so much time and it’s so intuitive!
Step 3. An iPhone in portrait or an iPad? Show me a menu!
If the iPhone is in portrait mode, it launches a menu on both iPhone and iPad with the first options being the camera followed by other Siri Shortcuts.
Which Siri Shortcuts are in my Action Button menu?
Actually, quite a few of them but depending if I launch them on the Apple Watch Ultra or on the iPhone 15 Pro the menus are quite different:
Apple Watch menu: workouts and Nozbe!
I decided to put add task to Nozbe via API Shortcut so that I can quickly dictate the task on the wrist and add it to Nozbe. Great way to add a task or an idea 💡 at anytime!
As a triathlete and tennis player I added my favorite workouts in that order: walk, run, cycle, tennis and swim. This way my muscle memory always knows where to find my favorite workouts!
Update as of December 2023: I’ve prepared a special Watchnote - Siri Shortcut to be able to add a note on the Apple Watch and I’ve added it my Action Button menu on both Watch and iPhone.
iPhone 15 Pro menu: Nozbe (duh!), Journaling and more!
On the iPhone my menu first has the Camera app - so I can quickly take a picture or a selfie. These are actually two separate menu items. Later I added the following shortcuts:
- Add task to Nozbe
- Journal
- Read Bible (in Polish)
- YouTube watcher
- And much more (quick blog, toggle VPN and other menus)
To launch other Siri Shortcuts I simply use the “Run Shortcut” action and choose the shortcuts I need the most. To launch apps, I use the “Open App” action.
I’m so happy the extra Actions app is free and has all these cool actions that can detect the state of the device you’re using. Thanks John for recommending it!
How about a “virtual” Action Button on the iPad?
On my beloved iPad Pro 13” I have no physical Action button, so I just created a widget that pretends to be the Action button and this way I’m using the same menu from the iPhone:
Get the Action Button shortcut template and adjust it to your needs!
Get the “Action Button” Shortcut I prepared for you.
If you’re Polish 🇵🇱 I also prepared a similar shortcut in Polish.
Then, customize it to your initial needs. Don’t sweat it, you can always change it and keep improving it. Just today I added some actions and changed the order of others. Thanks to this Siri Shortcut the Action Button keeps on adjusting itself to my needs!
And if you want to see someone geeking out about their Action Button, watch Christopher’s video where he also incorporates focus modes!