ActionMode: A Simpler, More Customizable Shortcut to Program Your Action Button
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ActionMode: A Simpler, More Customizable Shortcut to Program Your Action Button
Earlier this week, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 18.2. In addition to direct ChatGPT integration with Apple Intelligence and other AI features, the updates also come with a slew of tweaks and updates to built-in apps and other functionalities originally introduced in September. As Niléane mentioned in her story about the non-Apple Intelligence changes to iOS 18.2, one of the additions for power users is a brand-new Shortcuts action called ‘Get Current App’. I will explore this action today in a shortcut I created that vastly simplifies the process of customizing the behavior of the iPhone’s Action button.
I first wrote about personalizing the Action button when I shared my original MultiButton shortcut, which I later extended with CAPS, a series of shortcuts that allowed users to define different behaviors for the Action button depending on the currently active app. Those shortcuts were based on personal automations, and they utilized various workarounds to update a text file stored in iCloud Drive with the name of the app you just opened. The system got the job done, but it was prone to error, and it relied on notoriously finicky Files operations to successfully modify the text file whenever you switched between multiple apps. It worked, but it failed more often than I’d like, and it required a lot of setup on the user’s end.