Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations?

Not an automation, technically, but maybe it could be: I have an AppleScript that is set to run every hour that grabs any files on my desktop that have been there longer than a day, and puts them in a dated folder in an archive folder. Same for my downloads.

I have a cron job taking a picture of my desktop four times per minute into a dated folder structure. It allows me to zoom back in time (days out weeks back) to figure out what I was doing at a particular time or if I was showing someone a particular bit of code or something like that.

Podcasts in the shower: on bluetooth speaker connect, add 15 mins to the current time, set focus mode that ignores everyone until 15 mins later, resume podcasts playlist wherever it was left off. Only annoyance with this shortcut is it’ll pop up a notification to approve running the shortcut when it detects the speaker has been turned on.

I have those cheap paper nfc stickers hidden in random spots around the house and we have the same shortcuts setup on our phones so we can add dog food/loo roll/cleaning supplies etc etc to the shared shopping list in todo.

Similarly i like being able to tap my phone on the way out my home office to run script over ssh and shut everything down, turn off the lights and plugs etc

sort of an automation, but I install all my favorite apps with brew and then use brew again (brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask -g) to update everything

Bonus: I went the extra mile and wrote a script that bootstraps my entire setup: https://github.com/fastily/autobots/blob/master/macOS/setup/...

I was bored, so I used my parent's work iPhone to make a shortcut that grabs Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, plus definitions. It's based on the one Apple pre-made, but sends notifications instead of that web preview thing. It's not automated (so my parents wouldn't know), and runs via a home screen widget.

Not a specific automation, but the ability to run automations upon receiving an email lets you do some very cool stuff. For instance, I forward emails to a particular alias of mine, which kicks off a shortcut that adds the email to my reminders. But since you have access to the email body you could really do anything.

1. Switch off wifi, bluetooth, enable battery save mode at night and re-enable them in the morning 2. Switch off mobile data when connecting to my home wifi 3. Automatically enable and disable orientation lock when entering the photos app

MacOS: Combine several PDFs using Automator. Not spectacular, but always handy

iOS: Activate low power mode when battery drops below 95% - neat workaround since there is no way to have low power mode turned on permanently. Also, activate Airplane Mode from 1 am to 6 pm to save energy.

Wish I could create an automation, which would notify me when battery level in either of my AirPods drops bellow 10%... because sometimes when I put them in, they don't start charging. But nope, I cannot do it.

I'm a deep sleeper and need several alarms to wake up.

I have an automation which sets several at various increments, enables the sleep focus mode on my phone and sets the Home Assistant alarm script at that time too.

Automatically battery saving mode when battery charge drops below 50%

NFC card/sticker/tag tap: vibrate-confirm with audio description of associated object for vision impaired users.

URL -> ssh -> shell script for actions not possible on iOS.

I setup an automation to tell me when my battery reaches 100%.

Sometimes I want to know so I can disconnect and move about for extended periods of time ASAP.