Best iOS Shortcuts in 2026

Most “best Shortcuts” lists are the same twenty automations copied between sites, half of which stopped working two iOS releases ago. The reason is that they are written as lists of downloads rather than as a description of what a Shortcut is good at, so nobody notices when one rots.

I write and maintain a Shortcut that a lot of people use, so I have a decent view of which ones survive and which ones are a screenshot in a blog post.

What follows is organised by the job rather than by name, with enough detail that you could build most of these yourself in a few minutes. That way, when Apple changes something, you can fix it instead of searching for a replacement.

What makes a Shortcut worth keeping

Three tests, and almost everything worth having passes all three.

• It saves you a real number of taps on something you do repeatedly. A Shortcut that saves four taps on a thing you do twice a year is a novelty.
• It lives where you will hit it. The share sheet, the Action button, an automation trigger. A Shortcut you have to remember to open is a Shortcut you will stop using inside a fortnight.
• You can read what it does. Shortcuts are inspectable. Open one and every action is listed in order. Anything you cannot read, you should not run.

1. File conversion and media saving from the share sheet

This is the category I care most about, because iOS leaves genuine gaps here and they come up weekly. Converting HEIC so an Android friend can open your photo, shrinking an image under an upload form’s limit, pulling the audio out of a lecture recording, turning a pile of receipts into one PDF, saving a clip you are entitled to keep.

Grabio is my answer to that, a free Apple Shortcut with no App Store install and no account. The photo, PDF, video and M4A tools run on your phone using Apple’s own actions, so nothing uploads and they work offline.

The handful of jobs iOS genuinely cannot do locally hand off to a specific clean site, and the post how Grabio works says exactly which is which rather than blurring the line.

If you would rather build your own, the actions you want are Convert Image, Resize Image, Make PDF and Encode Media. They are all in the Shortcuts library and they all run locally.

2. A menu shortcut that holds your other shortcuts

The best structural trick in Shortcuts is the Choose from Menu action. You build one Shortcut, add a menu at the top with five or six options, and each branch does something different. Then you put that single Shortcut in your share sheet or on your Action button.

The point is that iOS gives you a limited number of good places to put a trigger. A menu turns one of those slots into ten. It is also how Grabio itself is built, which is why a single share sheet entry can offer conversion, compression, audio extraction and downloads without cluttering the sheet with a dozen icons.

3. Battery and Focus automations that run without you

Personal Automations are the underused half of the Shortcuts app. In the Automation tab you can trigger on time of day, arriving somewhere, leaving somewhere, connecting to a charger, joining a specific Wi-Fi network, opening an app, or a Focus turning on.

The ones that earn their place: Low Power Mode on at a battery threshold, a Focus that switches when you connect to your office Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth behaviour when you get in the car, and a wind down at a fixed time that dims the screen and silences everything.

None of these need a downloaded Shortcut. Build them once and forget they exist, which is the highest praise an automation can get.

4. Receipts and paperwork into a single PDF

If you claim expenses, apply for anything, or deal with any institution that wants documents, this is the Shortcut you will use most. Photograph the receipts as you get them, then at the end of the month select the lot and run one action that stitches them into a single, correctly ordered PDF.

The native action is Make PDF, fed by Combine Images. The full walkthrough including the ordering gotcha is in turning multiple photos into one PDF. It runs entirely on your device, which for financial paperwork is the only acceptable answer.

5. Resize and compress for the upload form that keeps refusing you

Government portals, job applications, university systems and visa sites all have file size limits from a decade ago, and none of them tell you what to do about it. Your iPhone shoots photos far above those limits by default.

A resize Shortcut fixes this in one tap from the share sheet, and it is worth having sitting there permanently rather than looking for a website every time. Reducing a photo’s file size on iPhone covers the sizes that actually get accepted. The relevant actions if you build it yourself are Resize Image and Convert Image, with the quality slider doing the real work.

6. A ringtone made from a song you own

A ringtone on iOS is an M4A file renamed with an m4r extension and kept under thirty seconds. That is genuinely the whole trick, and it is why an entire category of App Store apps charges money for it.

Trim Media cuts your thirty seconds, Encode Media with the audio only option produces the M4A, and the rest is naming. Converting audio to M4A covers the encoding half. Use audio you actually own, obviously.

7. QR codes, in both directions

Making a QR code is a single native action, Generate QR Code, fed by whatever text or link you share into it. Wi-Fi passwords for guests, a link to your booking, your own contact card. It runs on device and takes about a second, described in generating a QR code on iPhone.

Reading one out of a saved image is the harder direction, because the Camera app only scans what the lens can see. Screenshot a QR code and iOS has no clean built in route to decode it, which is exactly the kind of gap a Shortcut fills.

8. Saving media you are entitled to keep

iOS has never shipped a way to save a video off a social platform, and there is no sign it intends to. That leaves a long tail of legitimate cases with no native answer: your own posts, a clip you were sent, a talk you want on a flight with no signal.

The honest version of this Shortcut detects which platform a link came from and opens a clean downloader with the link already loaded, rather than claiming to do the download itself. The comparison of what is actually available is in the free video downloader roundup. Keep it to things you have the right to keep.

How to check a Shortcut before you run it

This part matters more than the list above and almost nobody writes it down. A Shortcut is code that someone else wrote, running with access to your files, your clipboard, your photos and your location. Treat it accordingly.

• Open it and read the actions. Every Shortcut is fully inspectable. Tap into it before you run it and scroll the whole thing.
• Look at every Get Contents of URL action. That is the one that sends data somewhere. Check the address and check what is being sent with it.
• Be suspicious of anything asking for a password, an API key or a login. There is almost never a good reason for a utility Shortcut to want one.
• Prefer sources that let you see the author. Apple’s own Gallery inside the Shortcuts app is the safest starting point. Community sites like RoutineHub are useful and are exactly as trustworthy as the individual author, which is a real distinction.
• A shortened link hiding the destination is a bad sign. If you cannot see where it goes, do not run it.

This is also why I have never shipped Grabio as an App Store app. A Shortcut can be read by anyone who installs it. A compiled app cannot.

Where to put them once you have them

Shortcuts are only as good as their trigger. The share sheet is the best slot for anything that acts on a file or a link. The Action button, on the iPhone models that have one, is the best slot for the single Shortcut you use most. Home Screen icons work for things you launch deliberately, and Personal Automations cover everything that should happen without you.

If you want the file and media half of this list without building any of it, Grabio is free, has no account and no daily cap, and installs in about thirty seconds. Get the Shortcut.

Best iOS Shortcuts: FAQ

Where do I find Shortcuts to install?

Start with the Gallery tab inside Apple’s own Shortcuts app, which is curated and safe. Beyond that, community sites like RoutineHub host user made Shortcuts, and their trustworthiness depends entirely on the individual author, so read the actions before running anything.

Are Shortcuts safe to install from strangers?

They are safe to inspect, which is the important part. Open any Shortcut and you can read every action it will run before you run it. Pay particular attention to Get Contents of URL actions, since those are what send data off your phone, and avoid anything that asks for a password or hides its destination behind a shortened link.

Do Shortcuts still work after an iOS update?

Usually. Apple rarely removes standard actions because it would break automations at scale. What tends to break is anything that depends on an outside website, since that is outside Apple’s control and outside the Shortcut author’s control too.

What is the difference between a Shortcut and an app?

A Shortcut is a file that runs inside Apple’s Shortcuts app using actions Apple already installed on your iPhone. There is no App Store download, no storage cost worth mentioning, no permissions to manage, and you can read exactly what it does. An app is compiled code you have to take on trust.

How many Shortcuts should I actually keep?

Fewer than you think. A handful of automations that run without you, plus one or two menu based Shortcuts in the share sheet that branch into everything else. A long list you never trigger is just clutter with extra steps.

Can Shortcuts do things apps cannot?

In some narrow ways, yes, because they can chain system actions together and sit in the share sheet of every app at once. They cannot exceed what iOS itself permits, so a Shortcut cannot place a file into a website’s upload box or encode an MP3, because iOS has no way to do either.