For years, the Shortcuts app on the iPhone has remained one of the most frustrating parts of the user experience. On one hand, it’s an utterly powerful app to create automations and perform multi-step tasks in a jiffy. However, the process of creating a shortcut has been pretty complicated and almost a test of patience.
It appears that Apple has finally listened to the feedback of iPhone users and is planning to give a major functional overhaul to the Shortcuts app with the release of iOS 2027. As per Bloomberg, Apple will finally let users describe the exact shortcut they want, in natural language, and the AI will create it for them.
What’s changing?
“The version now in testing lets users create shortcuts simply by describing what they want them to do. Currently, users need to manually build shortcuts within the app or download them from Apple’s gallery,” says the Bloomberg report. “The system then automatically builds and installs the shortcut on the device.”
Right now, if you go to the Shortcuts app, it’s a maze of functions, calls, and app integrations hidden behind obscure commands, even though most of them work just fine with the pre-installed Apple apps. However, you run into restrictions as soon as you start to create a shortcut that also interfaces with a third-party app.
But it’s not just the limitations with third-party apps that are truly frustrating. It’s the whole user flow in itself that is pretty complicated for an average person to head into the app and create an automation for themselves. With iOS 27, it seems Apple will finally let users simply wish a shortcut into existence, as long as they know the flow of commands and what the final result is going to be.
It’s not revolutionary
It is great news that Apple is finally paying some attention to the Shortcuts app and addressing a crucial pain point. However, this won’t be the first attempt of its kind. Following the arrival of Apple intelligence on iPhones, Apple also integrated AI automations in the Shortcuts App. In its current state, you can either pick between an on-device local model or an AI model that is hosted on Apple’s private cloud servers. However, those AI models are still pretty limited, and integrating them into a new shortcut is still a hassle.
This won’t be the first attempt of its kind. If you take a look at Anthropic’s Claude AI, it can create artifacts or even build entire apps by just having you describe them. Likewise, you can use natural language conversations to create a custom GPTs for ChatGPT, or even complex skills for Google’s Gemini AI. It seems Apple is borrowing some inspiration from these rival AI chatbots and finally letting users create multi-step Shortcuts by simply describing them using natural language prompts.