Developer of Shortcuts JS here, happy to answer any questions!
At the moment the future of Shortcuts JS is uncertain. In the latest (iOS 13) betas of the Shortcuts app Apple have removed the ability to import Shortcuts from a file, only allowing them to be installed from the iCloud Shortcut sharing service. I’m hopeful that this feature will be added back in when the Shortcuts app comes out of beta in a few months. If not, then unfortunately Shortcuts JS may be dead in the water.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like that works. I've been testing periodically as new betas are released, but I'm still seeing this every time I try to AirDrop a .shortcut over.
I mainly came across it while I was printing a QRcode to actually run a shortcut:// and while I see the file -> Airdrop as being useful you could at the end of the process deliver the same thing a QRcode to the shortcut you just developed no? Or am I missing something?
I don’t believe so, unfortunately. Regardless of what you use to trigger the Shortcut (a QR code, NFC, running it manually) the actual .shortcut file needs to be on the device so that it can actually be run. This means that you still need to find a way to import your generated .shortcut file onto your iOS device.
There is an ‘Allow Untrusted Shortcuts’ option in the Shortcuts section of the Settings app, but as far as I can tell this currently has no effect. Hopefully enabling that toggle will, in the future, allow the import of .shortcut files directly into the app.
Besides this particular change in shortcut deployment that do not allow users to import from external sources and that is constraining for your project, can you please share your thoughts on Apple vision regarding shortcuts ? Shortcut being deployed native in ios 13 means a programmatic interactivity with the OS that powers much of digital life of decision makers in Occident.
I agree, it made life significantly easier than just using regular JS. I’d not built anything from scratch with TS before this, but it seemed such a great fit for the project I decided to take the time to familiarise myself with it. No regrets whatsoever.
Great effort Josh! It's a shame that Apple decided to drop Workflow in favor of Shortcuts. Many powerful features were lost as a result. Case in point, Apple Watch geofencing automation. Apple will continue to get more closed as long as the market will allow them to do so.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t spend too much time with Workflow before Apple acquired them. I’m hoping that the community that’s grown around Shortcuts, and the ever more interesting things that people are doing with them, will help convince Apple to continue adding more and more powerful features to the app. Full control over system-level features would be incredible for power users.
No plans currently, but the more libraries pop up around Shortcuts the more likely it is that knowledge can be shared between them, and that things may be able to be reconciled in the future. 10 different libraries all working to implement the same thing is needlessly wasteful.
At the moment the future of Shortcuts JS is uncertain. In the latest (iOS 13) betas of the Shortcuts app Apple have removed the ability to import Shortcuts from a file, only allowing them to be installed from the iCloud Shortcut sharing service. I’m hopeful that this feature will be added back in when the Shortcuts app comes out of beta in a few months. If not, then unfortunately Shortcuts JS may be dead in the water.
If you want to read a bit more about how Shortcuts JS came to be, then take a look at the medium post I wrote when I launched it. https://medium.com/@JoshFarrant/creating-ios-12-shortcuts-wi...