Toolbox Pro for Shortcuts
Apple’s iOS Shortcuts gets 50 new actions and becomes instantly much more useful
Free (IAPs) From Alexander Hay, toolboxpro.app Made for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Needs iOS 13.2 or later
If you’re a fan of Apple’s Shortcuts app in iOS, or even if you’ve just 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.
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, recognize objects in photos, authenticate using FaceID and TouchID, 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. Talking of Reminders, Toolbox Pro actions allow 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.
THE BOTTOM LINE. Whether you rely on Shortcuts to get you through the day, or you just dabble from time to time, Toolbox Pro is a brilliant addition.