How to Add a Schedule to an iOS Shortcut

Issue #54

The Problem:

You have created an iOS Shortcut that is run by a Personal Automation, such as a coughing “Sound Recognition” as shown in Article #25 “Keeping Track of a Loved One’s Coughing”, but only want to run it during nighttime hours as you want to log only nighttime coughs to Apple Health during that time.

The Solution:

In iOS Shortcuts, you can use a combination of “IF” and “Date” actions as shown below:

Here is a sample Shortcut that you can modify. If you are not familiar with Apple Shortcuts, see “How to Create Simple Apple Shortcuts for Your Elderly Parent’s iPhone or iPad’

After creating the Shortcut, you can create the Personal Automation to trigger it (Apple doesn’t allow sharing of a Personal Automation sample)

 If you want to follow my example of “Cough recording”, perform these steps:

·      Settings-> Accessibility-> Sound Recognition-> Sound Recognition (ON)

o   Sounds-> Coughing (ON)

·      Create a Personal Automation triggered by the sound recognition to run your Shortcut

Bonus: How to easily access your shortcuts

If you have other Shortcuts that you manually tap by opening the Shortcut app every time you want to run one, it’s much easier just to speak the Shortcut name to Siri. However, if you prefer tapping on a Shortcut, you can add it to your Home Screen:

If you are running iOS/iPadOS version 14 or later, you can take advantage of “Widgets” to place multi-button groups of Shortcuts on the Home Screen. See the sample and instructions below: