Toolbox Pro for iOS

Apple’s iOS Shortcuts gets new actions and becomes much more useful Many of the actions take advantage of new features in iOS

FREE (offers in-app purchases) FROM Alexander Hay, toolboxpro.app FEATURES iOS 13.2 or later

Whether you’re a big fan of Apple’s Shortcuts app in iOS, or even if you’ve merely dabbled with it, Toolbox Pro has some goodies for you in the form of new actions you can add.

There are over 50 actions, many of them taking advantage of new features recently added to iOS, like Apple’s OCR engine that was first seen in Notes. In addition, developer Alex Hay has created example shortcuts so you can get started straight away. There’s documentation for every action describing its inputs, how it processes them and what it passes for output.

A great deal more

Among the actions Toolbox Pro brings to the Shortcuts party, in addition to OCR, are the ability to read from and write to NFC tags, recognise objects in photos, authenticate using Face ID and Touch ID, and create interest heat maps. And there’s more. Toolbox Pro actions allow you to sort and filter lists – so you could, for example, create a shortcut to remove duplicate items from a Reminders list and then sort it alphabetically.

In fact, Toolbox Pro actions enable you to edit existing reminders, as well as access new features in the latest version of Reminders like URL fields and image attachments – something that’s missing from Apple’s own Shortcuts actions. The action that allows you to grab URLs for songs from multiple streaming services means that you can share a song from your iPhone or iPad, with links for all of those streaming services.

Most Toolbox Pro actions run entirely in Shortcuts, though some have to open the Toolbox Pro app in the background. For those that do, the documentation describes how the Action processes data. In fact, the only reason you’ll ever have to open Toolbox Pro is to read documentation, view tutorials, or browse the list of built-in shortcuts. There’s no doubt that time spent going through tutorials is rewarded, and once you get into incorporating actions into your own shortcuts you’ll find it easy and convenient.

Many of the Actions run in the free version, while others require the Premium add-on. However, at a one-off payment of £5.99, that’s more than reasonably priced. KENNY HEMPHILL

Toolbox Pro actions appear in the Shortcuts app alongside built-in actions and those from other installed apps.

There are lots of example shortcuts that serve as demonstrations of Toolbox Pro actions.