The Shortcuts Gallery on iPhone: What Is Worth Adding

Open the Shortcuts app and there’s a tab at the bottom labeled Gallery, sitting there next to your own shortcuts and Automation. Most people tap it once, scroll past a wall of unfamiliar names, and never go back. It’s worth a second look, but only for a fraction of what’s actually in it.

What the Gallery actually is

On iPhone, tap Gallery at the bottom of the main Shortcuts screen (on iPad, swipe from the left edge and tap Gallery in the sidebar). What loads is Apple’s own curated catalog of pre-built shortcuts, organized into category rows — things like Essentials and Morning Routine, plus rows built around specific apps you have installed.

Swipe a row sideways to see more shortcuts in that category, tap See All to see the full list, or swipe up and down to move between rows entirely.

Tap into any shortcut and you get a description plus a preview of the actions it’s built from, so you can see roughly how it works before committing to it.

Adding one is a single tap on Add Shortcut, or Set Up Shortcut if it needs you to fill in a setting first, like which calendar to check or which app to open. There’s also a search field at the top of the Gallery for finding something specific rather than browsing categories.

What’s genuinely worth adding

The Essentials row tends to hold the shortcuts most people actually get value from day to day: quick toggles for things like Focus modes, a shortcut that dumps your clipboard into a note, one-tap actions tied to Health or Reminders. These are useful precisely because they’re small — a single action or two wired up to something you’d otherwise dig through Settings for.

The per-app rows are worth a scan if you use that app heavily. Apple builds these in partnership with the app’s own developer, so a shortcut in, say, a fitness app’s row is more likely to actually work well with that app’s data than something a random third party guessed at.

If you use the app daily, the five minutes spent scanning its Gallery row is worth it. If you don’t use the app, skip the row entirely rather than installing something you’ll never run.

What’s usually skippable

A lot of what fills out the Gallery is generic automation dressed up as a finished product — “good morning” routines that just chain together things you could trigger individually in five seconds, or novelty shortcuts built to demonstrate what Shortcuts can technically do rather than solve a real recurring problem.

None of it is broken, it’s just not going to save you time if you look honestly at how often you’d actually run it.

A decent filter: if you can’t picture yourself running it more than once, it’s a demo, not a tool. Add it if you’re curious how it’s built, skip it if you’re trying to trim down to what you’ll actually use.

Why community shortcuts, including Grabio, aren’t in here

This is the part that trips people up. The Gallery only ever surfaces Apple’s own curated selection — shortcuts Apple built, reviewed, and chose to feature. It was never designed as an open marketplace where independent developers submit their own automations for anyone to browse. That’s a deliberate boundary, not an oversight.

So community shortcuts, whether that’s a file converter, a download helper, or anything built by someone outside Apple, get distributed the same way they always have: a direct link that opens straight into Shortcuts and prompts you to add it, usually shared through a site, a forum post, or a Shortcuts-specific catalog like RoutineHub.

You won’t find them by browsing the Gallery no matter how thoroughly you scroll, because they were never eligible to be there.

Grabio, the free Shortcut I built for downloading media and converting files on-device, works exactly this way. It installs from a direct link rather than from inside the app, with no account or login involved either way. You can get it at grabio.adityaarsharma.com.

Building your own instead of relying on the Gallery

If nothing in the Gallery quite matches what you actually need, the honest next step is building your own rather than settling for the closest generic match. It’s more approachable than it looks — the walkthrough at creating a shortcut on iPhone covers getting from a blank canvas to something that runs reliably.

For finding more shortcuts, whether Apple’s own or from the wider community, the best shortcuts for iPhone and the best iOS shortcuts round up what’s actually worth installing beyond what the Gallery surfaces. And if you’re after inspiration for something to automate yourself rather than something ready-made, iPhone shortcuts ideas is a better starting point than scrolling the Gallery hoping something clicks.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the Gallery in the Shortcuts app?

On iPhone it’s a tab at the bottom of the main Shortcuts screen. On iPad, swipe from the left edge to open the sidebar and tap Gallery there.

Can I add my own shortcut to the Gallery for others to find?

No. The Gallery is Apple’s own curated catalog, not an open submission platform. Shortcuts built by anyone outside Apple are shared through direct links instead.

Why can’t I find a shortcut like Grabio in the Gallery?

Because community shortcuts were never eligible to appear there. They’re installed through a direct link that opens straight into the Shortcuts app, not through Apple’s curated browsing categories.

Is everything in the Gallery worth installing?

No. A good amount of it is a demonstration of what’s technically possible rather than something you’d run regularly. The Essentials row and shortcuts tied to apps you already use daily tend to be the most genuinely useful.

What if nothing in the Gallery does what I need?

Build your own. Shortcuts has a real, approachable editor for creating one from scratch, covered in the guide to creating a shortcut on iPhone.