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Federico Viticci

Editor-in-chief

Mastodon: @viticci@macstories.netEmail: viticci@macstories.net

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, and Dialog, a show where creativity meets technology.

He can also be found on his two other podcasts on Relay FM – Connected and Remaster.

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October 10, 2025

Automation Academy: Apple Intelligence, GPT-5, and the ‘Use Model’ Action in Shortcuts

As I mentioned in my iOS and iPadOS 26 review, I find Shortcuts’ ‘Use Model’ action one of the more interesting additions to Shortcuts this year (that is, besides the excellent Mac-only automation features) and a fascinating example of how Apple can leverage its third-party app ecosystem to sidestep the fact that they’re behind other companies in the development of a large language model.

In this article, I want to highlight and explain how I’ve been taking advantage of the ‘Use Model’ action to add AI features to my favorite apps that their developers didn’t create in the first place. This is the most fascinating aspect of Apple’s AI strategy this year (arguably, even more so than the Foundation Models framework for on-device AI) and it shows how the company’s partnership with OpenAI can be especially fruitful when GPT-5 is put in the hands of Shortcuts power users.

But first, in case you missed it, some necessary context. The ‘Use Model’ action is a new action of the Shortcuts app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26 that lets you ask questions to Apple’s on-device Foundation model, the larger one hosted on Private Cloud Compute, or ChatGPT, which is powered by GPT-5. What’s unique about this action isn’t that it can generate responses; it’s that it also understands native Shortcuts variables and can be configured to return data in a deterministic format, despite the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. Here’s how I described the action in my review:

in addition to freeform prompting and the ability to ask follow-up questions, you can pass Shortcuts variables to the action and explicitly tell the model to return a response based on a specific schema or type of variable. Effectively, Apple has built a Shortcuts GUI for what third-party developers can do with the Foundation model in Swift code, but they’re letting people work with the Private Cloud Compute model and ChatGPT, too.

And:

The true potential of the Use Model action as it relates to automation and productivity lies in the ability to mix and match data from apps (input variables) with structured data you want to get out of an LLM (output variables). This, I believe, is an example of Apple’s only advantage in this field over the competition, and it’s an aspect I would like to see them invest more in. Regardless of the model you’re using, you can tell the Use Model action to return a response with an ‘Automatic’ format or one of six custom formats:

  • Text
  • Number
  • Date
  • Boolean
  • List
  • Dictionary

With this kind of framework, you can imagine the kind of things you can build. Perhaps you want to make a shortcut that takes a look at your upcoming calendar events and returns their dates; or maybe you want to make one that organizes your reminders with a dictionary using keys for lists and values for task titles; perhaps you want to ask the model a question and consistently return a “True” or “False” response. All of those are possible with this action and its built-in support for schemas. What I love even more, though, is the fact that custom variables from third-party apps can be schemas too.

In this Automation Academy class, I’ll be focusing on variables from third-party apps and how I’ve built a suite of shortcuts that add new functionalities to two of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps: GoodLinks and Lire. I believe the integration between LLM, Shortcuts, and App Intents is a new frontier for hybrid automation; I hope this story will inspire you to come up with your own take on brand new features that don’t exist yet in the apps you use every day.

Let’s dive in.

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App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Best-o-Masto

Created by Comfort Zone’s Matt Birchler, Best-o-Masto is a Mastodon app that takes a different approach to browsing your timeline by automatically surfacing the most engaging posts. Rather than showing everything chronologically, the app analyzes your timeline to find and present the posts that have gotten the most interaction, which should help you catch up on what’s been happening without scrolling through the entire timeline and potentially getting distracted.

The app includes a ‘Top 8’ feature that lets you create a list of your favorite accounts whose posts will get priority treatment. (However, I wish I could search the list of Top 8 users I follow to find accounts more quickly.) While Best-o-Masto supports Mastodon features like composing, liking, and boosting posts, it notably doesn’t include quote posts or replies. The app works with any Mastodon server and can integrate with other popular clients like Ivory and Mona. I’ve been using the app for the past couple of weeks, and it’s a terrific way to see what’s been happening on Mastodon without getting sucked in. Highly recommended.

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Testing the Limits of the New Spotify Integration in ChatGPT

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

More stories for Club members.

Testing the Limits of the New Spotify Integration in ChatGPT

I wrote about the potential of apps in ChatGPT earlier this week on MacStories. Today, I want to share more details on how one of the first apps that support this new integration – Spotify – works inside ChatGPT, and how I’ve been using it to “vibe-playlist” my way into…well, AI-generated playlists based on real music. Or, at least I tried.

First things first: apps in ChatGPT are currently limited to the United States, which meant that I had to use a VPN to access ChatGPT’s settings and enable Spotify under ‘Apps & Connectors’. Hopefully, these integrations will soon expand to other markets; for now, keeping my device always connected via NordVPN (which I’ve been using for years and is fast and secure), isn’t a big deal.

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Interesting Links

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Interesting Links

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Working Copy

Working Copy, the powerful Git client for iPhone and iPad that I’ve been using for a long time to share and edit drafts of all my articles, received a major update this week that brings full compatibility with iOS and iPadOS 26. The app now sports a fresh Liquid Glass design language and, on the iPad, a native menu bar that makes app commands easier to discover and access. The update introduces several other improvements, including the ability to open files directly in other apps from the context menu without going through the share sheet, and – thanks to Apple Intelligence’s on-device Foundation model – filename suggestions when creating text files from the clipboard.

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