Business & Technology

Start vibe-coding your own iPhone Shortcuts already

Thanks to Siri AI and Shortcuts in iOS 27, I’ve finally created a better version of Shazam. Shazam is great for identifying songs you hear in the wild, but not so great at revisiting them later. It requires either Apple Music or Spotify to play the songs in full, and there’s no way to add more context about what made you tag a song to begin with. Now, I can press a button on my iPhone to make Shazam work the way I want: After identifying a song, it adds the name and artist to a “Shazam Tracks” page in Obsidian, includes a link to a free stream of that song on YouTube, and provides space for me to jot down where I was or what I was doing at the time. None of this required any coding knowledge on my part. Instead, I just described my ideal Shazam setup in Apple’s Shortcuts app, and it assembled the whole thing for me. Apple’s Shortcuts app has been around since 2018, letting you chain a series of actions into powerful routines. But while it’s a neat tool for power users, in the past it’s required a lot of tinkering with variables and if-then statements. The new “Describe a Shortcut” feature in iOS 27 makes the process much simpler, and it’s got me looking at iOS automation with some new energy. Describing a Shortcut To use Describe a Shortcut, you need an iPhone, iPad, or Mac that supports Siri AI: iPhone 15 Pro models or any newer iPhone. iPads with M-series processors or the A17 Pro iPad Mini. M-series Macs or the MacBook Neo. You will also need iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or MacOS 27 Golden Gate, and will need to opt into the Siri AI beta under Settings > Siri. There’s a waitlist, but getting through it only took a day in my experience. Once you have Siri AI access, open the Shortcuts app and hit the “+” button. Then, describe in natural language what you want to accomplish. Here are some examples of Shortcuts I’ve created by describing them: “Full charge” shortcut that overrides my usual 85% battery limit until the following day. “Urgent reminder” shortcut that schedules a task in the Reminders app with a full-blown alarm instead of a simple chime. “Rambler” shortcut for dictating a lengthy amount of text, cleaning it up using Apple’s cloud-based AI models, and then sharing or copying it to the clipboard. “Turn on grayscale” shortcut that switches the screen to black-and-white mode at bedtime, while also showing options to turn grayscale back off or delay it by five minutes. Companion “Turn off grayscale” shortcut that activates at wake-up. “Scan Document” shortcut that loads the document scanner in Apple’s Files app. Once you’ve created a Shortcut, trigger it by tapping its icon in the Shortcuts app or asking Siri to run it by name. For even easier access, add it to your home screen (long-press the Shortcut and hit “Share” to see this option), assign it an iPhone’s physical Action Button (under Settings > Action Button), or use Back Tap. You can also run Shortcuts automatically, based on triggers like time of day, your location, phone settings, charging status, battery level, Focus mode, or when a specific app is running. These triggers now live directly inside each Shortcut, so you can include them while describing the Shortcut you want to create. Fine-tuning Like an AI chatbot, Apple’s “Describe a Shortcut” prompt will respond to follow-ups, which is helpful if the Shortcut doesn’t do exactly what you wanted. While creating my “Urgent reminder” Shortcut, for instance, the app misinterpreted my request and merely added a “flag” toggle to the reminder. I had to make clear that the reminder should trigger an alarm instead. The more precise and descriptive you can be, the better. The old way of creating Shortcuts also remains available by tapping the “Edit” button. This brings up a menu where you can manually chain together new actions or modify existing ones. While you shouldn’t have to mess with this menu too much, it can be a useful reference for all the things that Shortcuts can do. In a way, Apple’s new “Describe a Shortcut” feature is like a diet version of vibe coding, letting you bypass all the confusing steps that iOS and Mac automation once required. Even if there’s no actual code involved, it’s a way to accomplish things that may be just a bit beyond your technical grasp, and it’s quietly one of iOS 27’s best new features.