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I've been looking forward to this feature, but I must say I'm pretty disappointed that most of the personal automations still require a manual approval before
by adamjcooper 7y ago
I've been looking forward to this feature, but I must say I'm pretty disappointed that most of the personal automations still require a manual approval before they will execute. For example, I can schedule a particular shortcut to always run at a specific time. When that time comes, however, my phone will display a notification which I must physically tap to execute the automation. If I miss the notification, nothing will happen. The same is true for "When I Arrive..." and "When I Leave..." triggers. Which means, often, I'll get a notification in the car, while I'm driving, which I must tap to execute the automation.
I can see why Apple would want to step cautiously with consumer-based automation, but I was really expecting that all of these new automation triggers would fire without needing any manual approval, or at least that there would be a way to configure them to do so.
I have read that you can use a HomePod, Apple TV, or always-plugged-in iPad as a home hub, and my understanding is the triggers offered here will run in a fully automated fashion. I hope to explore that at some point.
Still, I'm very happy to see the progress in Shortcuts, and I expect it will only get better.
- matwood 7y agoAgreed. Unfortunately the list that requires manual action are the ones I really wanted to run, particularly bluetooth and time of day: https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/enable-or-disable-a-personal-automation-apd602971e63/3.1/ios/13.1 https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/enable-or-disable-...
- jasongill 7y agoThe list of auto-approved items seems somewhat arbitrary, but I think they had privacy concerns in mind when they made the list (although it seems stupid that you can't override those protections if you'd like). All of the ones on the "cannot be run automatically" list are things that a bad actor could do if they had your phone, like wait for a certain time of day, or move your phone to a specific location, or bring it in range of a particular bluetooth or wifi device. But then, NFC is on the "can be run automatically" list, meaning that a bad actor could touch your phone to a NFC tag to trigger an action, so that doesn't make much sense. The rest of the items on the "can be run automatically" list are all ones that require your phone to be unlocked (I think). Very odd choice by Apple for something that will be used by relatively few people and would greatly increase the usability of the feature
- graeme 7y agoThe NFC automation is tied to specific tags. So the thief would have to be in your house tapping a specific tag you setup.
- jasongill 7y agoYes, but what if the NFC tag was on your keychain with your phone, which the attacker also had? That seems far more likely than being able to spoof a Bluetooth device that your phone had already paired with in the past (yet that one is in the list of "not automatic" choices)
- marksomnian 7y agoWhen the attacker has your keys and your phone, you have bigger problems.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- barkerja 7y agoThat's true about the potential for bad actor, but it's also true for many false positives. Passive automations based on location, bluetooth, wifi, etc. stand a good chance of many accidental triggers. Connections are flaky, location accuracy is flaky; without some form of throttling mechanism or way to better control accidental firings, it should remain manual.
- ehPReth 7y agoThanks for this. Was wondering why my music wasn't automatically shuffling + playing when I got into my car :(
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- josephhainline 7y agoI agree it's disappointing. Any interesting automation is basically impossible. I've also found the arrival and leave triggers to only work about half the time, which seems a lot worse than I would expect from Siri location-based reminders which work pretty well.
- jakobegger 7y agoI have never gotten location based reminders to work. I've tried setting up reminders when I arrive or leave work / home, but they never fired. The worst thing is that there is no indication that tells you why it didn't work.
- heavymark 7y agoAh, just wrote a flattering post here on it, but wasn't aware it still had the manual approval issue which is unfortunate. I understand it for some things like When I arrive home, since otherwise when I'm outside running loops by house, each time I come by the house it would open the garage which wouldn't be good, but so many other cases where manual approval seems odd, and at least should be able to approve with with one click on apple watch with out having to open the notification then approve.
- graeme 7y agoApple watch is a great idea! I wish they had a shortcuts app on the watch too. Hopefully they'll have the notifications there, if they don't already.
- conradev 7y agoNotifications (in general) are mirrored between phone and watch, so they do show up on the watch
- kevin2r 7y agoThey could implement to run automatically for the first time and them need approval in the next 30 mins to avoid spamming.
- skinnymuch 7y agoFoursquare third party clients during its hey day that did auto check-in would have a cooling off period of X minutes or hours not to check-in to same location again. Apple could do something like that. Probably a bit more sophisticated.
- gshakir 7y agoI think battery usage could be a primary concern here. Yes, this should continue to improve. Imagine coming home and all your blinds open automatically, lights turn on etc.
- jasongill 7y agoI don't think battery usage is the concern, because the alert still triggers - you just have to approve it. By the time you get the alert to approve it, the bluetooth or wifi or location services have already been running (using battery) and triggered the action
- draugadrotten 7y ago> Imagine coming home and all your blinds open automatically, lights turn on etc. Try home assistant. Open source. Integrates with nearly everything, including apple homekit stuff.
- amdavidson 7y agoThis can already be done in the "home automation" side of the shortcuts / home app. My own house lights up whenever my wife or I come home after dark and goes dark again when we leave.
- philo23 7y agoI've heard quite a few times now that some of the reasons these automations aren't completely automatic is to avoid them being abused by people with bad intentions. Say for example someone setting one up on someone else's phone (without their knowledge) to run every X minutes and using it to track someone's location, without them ever knowing about it. I'm not entirely sure that's the real reason behind these notifications, but it does seem plausible.
- mbolton12 7y agoApps already do this in the background without end users knowledge. Not saying this is right but it seems odd that it's okay for an app to do this to its users but not a user doing this to themself? It would be nice if these automations could run automatically but perhaps, notify the user that said automation has run and allow them to easily disable the automation.
- barkerja 7y agoI don't think it's so much a privacy concern (it certainly is), but more with regards to accidental triggers by actions that are passive and flaky. Location accuracy isn't always the greatest, particularly indoors; in-and-out connections to wifi/bluetooth are possible when you're on the fringe of its range. These issues need to be addressed in some form before _true_ automation is given to them.
- kstrauser 7y agoI would be perfectly happy to receive a popup that an automation had just run. Also, Apple has been pushing for self-adjusting notification preferences. Imagine a popup like: "The shortcut 'Foo' wants to run. Do you want to allow it? - Never - Not this time - Run once - Always" Put an icon next to each shortcut showing whether it's always (or never) allowed, and it seems like the problem would be largely solved without asking much from the end user.
- philo23 7y agoThis sounds like a very reasonable solution. I kinda hope this is the way they end up solving it, if this really is the reason they're not truly automatic.
- otterley 7y agoMy guess is that it's a security issue. Suppose your phone were confiscated and you had an automation that revealed some sensitive information to the possessor of the phone, or a compromised third party. You might not want to run the automation under such conditions.
- onemoresoop 7y agoDo you have to unlock the phone to confirm the automation popup?
- rackad 7y agoI have the same question. Can we run the automation while phone being locked?
- heavyset_go 7y agoThe failure mode for full automation that's set up by consumers and controlled by a third party via the web can be really bad.
- Hamuko 7y agoCan you at least approve them on the watch so you don't have to dig out your phone every time?