The iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, macOS 13.3, and watchOS 9.4 updates add a long list of new actions and improvements to the dedicated Shortcuts app, which is available on Apple’s iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
Users can now use the “Find a Book” action in the Books app to search for a book or PDF file based on title, author, genre, purchase date, or content type. The Walkie Talkie action can also be used to send notifications to the HomePod in your home from your iOS device. In addition, there are special actions to turn on or off 24/7 display on supported devices. On the Mac, there are also actions that allow users to log off or put the Mac to sleep.
Here are some of the new Quick Command actions:
- Find a Book: Search for a book or PDF file in your library on iOS and macOS
- Walkie Talkie: Broadcast notifications to your home on iOS and watchOS
- Set up a virtual private network: connect, disconnect, or set up any virtual private network on demand on iOS and macOS
- Set up AirDrop reception: Set AirDrop reception preferences to everyone, contacts only, or no one on iOS and macOS
- Set Up Stage Scheduling: Enable or disable and change settings for Stage Manager on iPadOS and macOS
- Set Notification Broadcast: Toggle notification broadcast settings on iOS and watchOS
- Set Mute Unknown Caller: toggle the Mute Unknown Caller setting on iOS
- Set Night Shift mode and set True Tone: toggle display settings on iOS and macOS
- Set All Weather Display: toggle All Weather Display on supported iOS devices
- Find Apps: Find and filter installed apps on macOS
- Find Monitors: Find and filter monitors on macOS
- Shutdown, Restart, and Lock Screen: Now available on both iOS and macOS
- Log off, sleep, and turn off the display: now available on macOS
Some existing actions have also been updated. For example, the Find Photos action can now be used to find recorded videos, and the Get Device Details action can now display the operating system version number.
The following are some of the updated Quick Command actions:
- Move Window: It is now possible to move a window to a display on macOS
- Request input: There is a new “Allow multiple lines” option that disables single-line text input
- Find Photos: Now you can find recorded videos
- Find Contacts: now more accurately filter by birthday
- Get Device Details: now gets the OS version number
- Get Device Details: now rounds numbers, including current battery, volume, and brightness, to remove unnecessary decimal places
- Set Play Target: now works when running from Siri
- Play Music: Now continues to play the currently playing music if no music is passed in as input
- Run AppleScript: now generates a dictionary from AppleScript records as output
- No action: now generates a variable with zero items instead of no variable at all
- Repeat: can now be set to run 0 times
