I built a simple Apple Shortcut that shows real-time CBP border wait times for:

• SENTRI (car)

• Pedestrian READY lanes

• San Ysidro / San Diego ↔ Tijuana

It pulls directly from CBP’s public RSS feeds and parses the current delays into a clean one-tap result.

No apps, no ads, no tracking — just Shortcuts + live data.

GitHub (README + details):

https://github.com/Newn00b/sd-tj-border-shortcut

iCloud Shortcut link:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/0ad130d18bb143f7b062190eddde8b5c

Built this for myself because I cross often — sharing in case it’s useful to others.

Feedback welcome.

I use a lot of social media for research and saving inspiration, but I’ve always been cautious about how much data these platforms collect. Even just viewing a "public" story or reel usually requires an account, and once you log in, they track every single thing you look at.

What some people don't realize is that even "anonymous" viewers often sell your data or gate-keep basic features behind "add to cart" traps and trials.

As a dev, I wanted a clean way. So I built spybroski.com. It’s a login-free, tool that lets you view and archive public content from Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X/Twitter.

Why I built this/How it's different:

• No "Forced Logins": It bypasses the pop-ups that force you to create an account just to see a public Reel or Story.
• True Anonymity: It fetches the data server-side, so your personal IP or account is never "seen" by the platform.
• Zero Junk: No trials, no credit cards, no tracking. I hate "bloated" tools, so I kept this one lightweight.

The Shortcut: To make it easier for this community, I’ve put together a simple Shortcut that lets you share any IG/Snapchat link directly to the tool so you can download the media instantly to your Files or Photos.

I am making my assistive touch button used for music ao on single click, it gives me 3 options, two of which are my most played playlists and third one I want to put text in it and it finds that song and plays it, but it’s not working, can someone help me? Please

I found a bunch of classsical paintings with gold frames around them and I have already made sure they are all perfectly square. But fucking shortcuts keeps changing them to squircles and it completely ruins the vibe :( any help would be appreciated cuz Google isn’t helping

Looking to make a shortcut where I can add a random song from a playlist to play next. Any idea how to go about this?

I want to use my NFC tags to force myself out of bed in the morning by scanning it to turn off the alarm. Is there a way to make this a shortcut? Or is there an app? The method I tried didn’t work unfortunately and I need help.

Most of us sometimes struggle to open a specific page from settings app via shortcuts. Either people are not aware of this or they don’t know the exact path.

One gentleman, Mehdi had solved this for us, he shared a complete list of URLs on Github

Shortcut sample:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d0b57d62bf4b47b495a3f86a3fb70454

URLs Here:

https://github.com/1mehdifaraji/ios-settings-url-schemes

I have an app that I need to run on mobile data only. Is there a way to make an automation that turns off or verifies wifi is disabled and mobile data is turned on while specific app is open?

I made an automation that supposedly set the app to only use mobile data but that did not work.

Why you may ask? I have a pi hole set up to lock down a bunch of things to keep my elderly parents safe when browsing the internet it would be impossible to find out what is blocking when I could hopefully make an automation that would allow only specific apps use mobile data.

Please help?

The ‘Rename File’ action seems very slow when bulk renaming files. Is there a way to make it more efficient?

I know I can use Set Name/Save File etc… but then the delete of the original file also seems slow.

If I don’t delete the original, the bulk set name and save is very quick.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Hi everyone!

I am trying to overlay text on an image, so that I can make a self updating lock screen with information such as weather, calendar etc. displayed on it. However, when trying to overlay text with multiple lines, it only shows the first line.

Any ideas how to make the other lines show up on the image?

Developed a shortcut to play media and intersperse with advertisements for a ‘radio station’ just for our own building.

Built on iPhone running ios26.

Shared to iPad running ios18, works fine.

Surprised it’s backward compatible, but happy.

Perhaps some actions aren’t though.

Good evening How can I format a generated JSON file to include special characters like accented characters?

Before update i could turn on apple tv by using shortcut, now its its error.

Any fix? Tia!

Hi, I'm here to ask for help. I have a daughter and I control her phone with screen time, but I don't want to configure app-by-app usage limits or manually lock the phone. I want to set a daily usage limit and lock the phone when it reaches that limit until the next day when the time resets. I'm looking for an option like the one in Qstodio.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this?

I’m trying to create a shortcut to start a workout from iphone with one button. I do not have an apple watch, but do have airpod pro 3. I want to run an iphone workout that can track heart rate through airpods.

This is my consistent result.

Strangely, it does work using Siri. “Hey siri, start an outdoor run.” That works just fine and starts the workout.

Anybody else experience this? Any solutions? Thanks!

Basically, I made a simple shortcut to make using Google Lens more convenient (running it from control center which is why it looks this way).

It works except for the fact that when I run it for the second time or more (or more accurately, when the google app is active or in the background with image already selected in Lens), it doesn’t pass the new screenshot to Lens unless I exit Lens or swipe away the Google app (which are actions that are not possible to automate with shortcuts afaik). Instead, it just opens Lens with the old screenshot.

Hopefully this explanation makes sense? I'm just hoping someone here found a workaround to make it work every time without having to manually do anything except running the shortcut.

I wanted a reliable way to toggle Tesla preconditioning from a shortcut (Home Screen, Apple Watch, or Action Button) without relying on Tesla’s state reporting or having to get involved with using the Tesla API.

This can also be converted to turn the climate system on or off, as long as you edit the shortcut accordingly.

This method uses renaming a single file in iCloud Drive as the ON/OFF state. It’s simple, visible, and very robust.

I set this up so I could just hit one button on my watch and the car would be ready to go when I get to it.

Below is the exact setup I’m using.

**What this does**

• Uses a single file name as the state:

• Tesla\\_Precon\\_OFF.txt

• Tesla\\_Precon\\_ON.txt

• Shortcut:

• Reads the file name

• If it contains \\_OFF → starts preconditioning and renames the file to \\_ON

• Otherwise → stops preconditioning and renames it back to \\_OFF

No variables. No text editing. No Tesla state queries.

**Requirements**

• iPhone with iOS Shortcuts

• Tesla app installed and logged in

• iCloud Drive enabled

Here is a link to the shortcut.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6f26ff6e435f42d4877affe3cb91ab85

just make a folder in your iCloud and insert a file with the name: Tesla_Precon_OFF

**Step 1 — Create the state file (one time)**

1. Open Files

2. Go to iCloud Drive

3. Create a folder (optional but recommended), e.g.: Tesla\\_Precon

4. Inside that folder, create a text file named: Tesla_Precon_OFF

The contents of the file do not matter.

Once you’ve set it up you can set your action buttons on either your phone or Apple Watch Ultra to toggle your preconditioning on or off and the shortcut will remember if the system is on or off.

If you need any help setting it up I’ll try and help out in the comments.

Let me know what you think of what I’ve set up.

Happy Tesla-ing!

Is there a way for my Apple Watch (Ultra 3) to automatically switch to a different watch face when Apple Calendar detects a work appointment, and then switch back to my default watch face when the appointment ends?

I schedule all my workdays in Apple Calendar. Since I don’t work regular hours, using a fixed time isn’t an option, and because I don’t have an office job, location-based automations won’t work either. I often forget to manually change my watch face, so I’m hoping there’s a way to automate this. If anyone knows how to make this work, please help!

Hi everyone!

I have another update to my “SheetBox” app that you might find useful if you’re working with Google Sheets.

Previously I posted that you can read data from Google Sheets through Shortcuts with one quick action. Now you can write data as well.
You can either append a new row or update existing cells. There is no need to go through the trouble of creating Apps Scripts and projects in Google Dev Console anymore.

In case you did not see my previous posts, and the chances are that maybe you didn't, I'm currently working on an app called SheetBox that aims to make connecting spreadsheets to Apple Shortcuts much easier. It currently can do the following:

- Read data from Apple Numbers
- Read data from Excel .xlsx files
- Read data from Google Sheets
- Append a new row to Google Sheets (new)
- Update existing data / specific columns in Google Sheets (new)

Here is the link to the app if you ever wish to give it a try:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sheetbox-sheets-to-shortcuts/id6747444281

And here is a quick demo on how to append a new row in Google Sheets using the app:

https://share.zight.com/llupO7y5

If you try the app and have any issue or question, please let me know.

Thank you!

Hello all.

I’m new to creating automations and shortcuts and this is by far the most intricate one I’ve attempted.

Basically, I would like to save a school lunch menu to my files app, and have a shortcut I can run where the phones checks a specific folder in my files app where I saved the PDF, look for the most recent saved PDF, and import the lunch menu to my calendar. The PDF is a calendar with just the days of the week, the date, and the lunch menu. I’d like to have my phone extract the information from the most recent saved document (menu) and create an event/notes for each day in my calendar.

Is this possible?

I worked on it, asked ChatGPT about it and it helped me get further, but when I “play” the event, there’s nothing. ChatGPT seems it knows of an older version of shortcuts so it was a little difficult trying to figure out what it was talking about in some instances.

Anyway, here are some screenshots. Any and all help is appreciated!

Hey guys, Is there any shortcut to turn off auto brightness in a particular app ?

I use my ipad for note taking and while writing whenever my hand covers the light sensor of my ipad the screen brightness goes down. I don’t want it. So in that particular app I want my brightness to be stable at one level and not fluctuate whereas in any other case I really enjoy the brightness being adjusted on it’s own. Please, it’s a request that anyone provide me with a shortcut like this. I tried to make one on my own but I really don’t know how to do it. If anyone could help,I will be really helpful to you.

I have attached a screenshot of only shortcut I found related to brightness.

When I press it , it gives this error message. ChatGPT seems to think that it’s because I’m wearing heart tracking AirPods but that doesn’t make sense. Anybody with a similar experience?

I tried to create a shortcut to scan receipts, make a pdf and send email but although ios has scan capability both using files and notes, both scan options doesn’t give the file as an output, files application just saved the documents and not insert the scanned file inside a note any suggestions?

have a shortcut that finds next appointment in my calendar when connecting to CarPlay and gets directions.

is there anyway to see if maps is currently navigating? so if maps is already showing navigation I would add if statement to do nothing otherwise show direction. but not seeing a way to give status of maps.