The iPhone Shortcuts App: A Plain-English Guide

Someone told you to “make a Shortcut” for something, or you tapped a link and a strange icon landed on your Home Screen that did five things in a row with one tap.

Or you opened the Shortcuts app because iOS nagged you to set up an automation, saw a wall of colored blocks and arrows, and closed it again. None of that is your fault — Shortcuts doesn’t explain itself. It’s an empty toolbox until someone tells you what the tools are.

What Shortcuts actually is

Shortcuts is Apple’s built-in automation app. It’s been preinstalled on every iPhone since iOS 13, so you already have it — look for a pastel icon that looks like a steering wheel, either on a Home Screen page or in your App Library.

A “shortcut” is a small chain of steps (Apple calls them actions) that runs in order when you trigger it: grab the current photo, resize it, save it.

Grab the clipboard, wrap it in a message, send it. Each action passes its result to the next one, like a very short recipe.

It’s not a coding app, even though it looks like one at first. You’re not writing text — you’re stacking pre-built blocks and filling in their blanks.

The three tabs, and what each one is for

Open Shortcuts and you’ll see three tabs at the bottom: My Shortcuts, Gallery, and Automation.

• My Shortcuts is your own list — anything you’ve built or installed shows up here as a tile you tap to run.
• Gallery is Apple’s curated set of premade shortcuts, grouped by category, that you can add with one tap without building anything.
• Automation is for shortcuts that run themselves, based on a trigger, rather than ones you tap.

Building your first one

Go to My Shortcuts and tap the + in the top-right corner. Tap Add Action, then search for what you want (typing “resize” or “text” or “photo” narrows the list fast).

Tap an action to drop it into the shortcut, tap any blue or underlined values inside it to change them, and stack a second action the same way. Tap the name at the top to rename it, then tap Done. That’s the whole process — there’s no compiling, no saving step you can forget.

To run it: tap its tile in My Shortcuts, or make it faster to reach by tapping the three-dot menu on the tile, then the settings icon, and turning on Add to Home Screen or Show in Share Sheet, depending on how you’ll use it.

Where shortcuts show up around iOS

Once a shortcut exists, it isn’t stuck in the app. Depending on how it’s set up, it can appear in the Share Sheet (the row of icons you get when you tap the share button on a photo, link, or file), as a Home Screen icon, inside a widget, through a Siri voice phrase you record for it, or bound to the Action Button on iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

That’s the actual point of the app — build the logic once, then trigger it from wherever you happen to be.

The one thing that trips everyone up: permissions

The first time a shortcut touches something sensitive — your photos, contacts, or the network — iOS interrupts with an “Allow” prompt. That’s expected and only happens once per shortcut per permission.

If a shortcut you didn’t build (one shared by someone else, or downloaded from a forum) refuses to run at all, check Settings → Shortcuts → Advanced for a toggle called Allow Running Scripts or Allow Untrusted Shortcuts — Apple hides this option until your device has run at least one shortcut of its own, which confuses a lot of people the first time they go looking for it.

You don’t have to build everything yourself

A lot of the useful ones are already built. Grabio, for instance, is a free shortcut that handles the two things people build shortcuts for most — pulling a shared link into a clean download, and converting a shared file on-device — without you having to wire up the actions yourself.

Keeping things tidy

Shortcuts pile up fast once you start collecting them. If one is misbehaving or you just want it gone, see how to turn off or delete a shortcut on iPhone. If you want the icon on your Home Screen to actually look like something instead of a generic gray square, there’s a full walkthrough on customizing a shortcut’s icon.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know how to code to use Shortcuts?

No. Every action is a pre-built block with fields you tap and fill in — there’s no syntax to learn or memorize.

Is Shortcuts free?

Yes, it’s a free app from Apple that comes installed on every iPhone running iOS 13 or later. There’s nothing to buy inside it.

Can a shortcut run automatically, without me tapping anything?

Yes — that’s what the Automation tab is for. You can trigger one by time of day, arriving or leaving a location, connecting to Wi-Fi, opening an app, or a few other events.

Why does a shortcut I downloaded refuse to run?

iOS blocks shortcuts it doesn’t recognize by default. Go to Settings → Shortcuts → Advanced and turn on the option to allow untrusted shortcuts — it only appears after you’ve run at least one shortcut on the device already.

What’s the difference between the Shortcuts app and a widget?

A widget is a small display on your Home Screen or Lock Screen; a shortcut is an action that runs and does something. Some shortcuts are set up to launch straight from a widget tap.

Can I share a shortcut I built with someone else?

Yes, tap the share icon on a shortcut’s tile and choose iCloud link — anyone who opens the link can add it to their own Shortcuts app.