Apple surprised audiences at WWDC 2025 by pulling the curtain on its revamped Shortcuts app, now hardwired with its latest artificial intelligence features for iPhone.
The app’s transformation goes well beyond cosmetic tweaks. Shortcuts can now directly harness Apple’s own language model, working on the device itself or through Private Compute for added privacy and security.
Developers are getting a green light to integrate this AI power into their apps, opening up opportunities for far more creative automations.
Imagine a student quickly building a shortcut that has AI compare the transcript from a class to handwritten notes, then surfaces any missed information.
If that’s not enough, ChatGPT can now be looped in as part of the workflow, giving even richer responses on the fly.
Intelligent actions, as Apple now calls them, are new shortcuts that spring from the intelligence baked into the phone.
Suddenly, generating a text summary or creating a one of a kind image takes only a few taps, thanks to Apple’s Writing Tools and Image Playground.
Making Automation Accessible To Everyone
The big shift aims to make automations not just for the technically savvy crowd.
For years, Shortcuts was a playground for power users who loved to tinker, building anything from meme generators to tools that pulled meeting notes, managed screenshots, or even tracked everyday routines.
With AI at the controls, the hope is to open that world up to anyone with an idea to make their phone do more, with far less manual setup.
These changes are speeding up the wider rollout of Apple Intelligence, and offer a glimpse at what’s ahead for the iPhone experience while the company takes more time upgrading Siri.
Early testers can start playing with these new features right away, with Apple opening it up for experimentation this week.
Shortcuts, once a niche gem, could soon become indispensable AI automation tool for people hoping to lighten the load of their daily digital lives.
