Master Your iPhone 16 Action Button: 15 Shortcuts + Tips!

0:00 if you updated to the iPhone 16 or 16 Pro you now have an action button you can program this button to many different actions including things like a flashlight even live translate but there are two powerful controls here at the end which allows you to program any control center action to that button or any shortcut so in this video I'm going to give you 15 shortcut ideas that are easy to build plus you can download them in the video description that makes the action button super powerful it could be a dedicated chat GPT voice conversation button use new iOS 18 actions to toggle a smart home device like your garage create a makeshift clipboard manager right on your iPhone and I'll get into some Advanced automations using IF statements to have the action button change its function whether you're in different Focus modes or different times of day and before we even get to the shortcuts I'm going to give you three bonus tips right here at the top you may have seen this when someone activates

0:46 the action button and this is actually a shortcuts folder it looks a little nicer than a shortcuts menu and this is easy to create just go to the shortcuts app here on your iPhone then in your folder view just tap the new folder action up here title your folder and put whatever action you would like in that folder you see here I have my action button folder and these are all the shortcuts we're going to be going over in a moment and it will show the first eight shortcuts when you program it to a folder then just go over to settings scroll down to where you see action button it might be on one of these earlier options but scroll towards the end where you see shortcuts tap here and then search for the show folder action here and choose the folder that you created in the shortcuts app now whenever you hold the action button you'll actually have the folder come up and you can quickly access your top eight shortcuts bonus tip number two if we go to the settings

1:31 app and then back into the action button settings not only can you program a shortcut but a new Option with iOS 18 is access to any control center action I did an entire video on 32 great apps that add third party actions to control center I'll link it above in the description but any of those actions are also available for the action button like Bear My Notes app you can have create a new note program to the action button if I tap that now wherever I am on my iPhone I hold the action button and it automatically creates a new note in be and if you're on the iPhone 16 you now have that dedicated camera control button well then you can use the action button to launch a thirdparty camera app like halide so you have the stock camera on camera control and halide on the action button and one last bonus tip before we get to the shortcuts you can change your lock screen icons with iOS

2:18 18 so just tap and hold when you're looking at your lock screen hit customize go back to the lock screen then you can swap out the default flashlight and Camera icons for whatever control center action you'd like all right let's get to the short cuts a lot of these early shortcuts are simple one action shortcuts although you could still just directly download them with the links below but if you would like a dedicated chat GPT voice conversation button you can use this action you do need the chat GPT app installed on your phone and when you search for chat GPT the start voice conversation action is all you need once you created that shortcut just go over to the action button settings back to the shortcut option search for that shortcut name set it and now you have a chat GPT button holding the action button for a second now starts that conversation what's the average rainfall in the Amazon basin the average annual rainfall in the Amazon

3:04 basin is around 80 to 120 in and now you can quickly have two voice assistants at the touch of a finger number two a great update to iOS 18 is the homekit toggle action before you used to have to do an if statement and get the status of your devices but now if you search for toggle you'll see this action unique to iOS 18 which is toggle accessory State once you add that action choose what device you'd like to toggle I'm going to choose my garage door and now whenever I run this action it will actually open or close my garage door depending on its state map that to the action button and now your iPhone has become a garage door opener and while we're in the garage you can also use the action button as a trunk opener let's say for your Tesla now there's no toggle option here so you'd actually have to have a second action to close it and there's no way to get the status of the trunk but if you just want

3:51 to be able to quickly open the trunk the action button can do that too number four you can use the action button to wake Apple TVs and show the remote control for a specific TV T I've added two actions here wake Apple TV and then show remote control here we can choose the Apple TV we want let's go with the studio Apple TV and then we can also open the remote control for that Apple TV now whenever we run this shortcut even if it's from the action button it's going to wake that Apple TV and show the remote so I can start controlling it right away you can also combine multiple actions to open a specific app on that Apple TV I actually have an entire video on Apple TV shortcuts I'll link it above and in the description number five I call this my super mute shortcut while while you can have silent mode set to the action button often times I also want the media volume set to zero this shortcut is a little more complicated

4:36 download it in the video description and you need a third party app called Toolbox Pro but what this does is it will see is your phone in silent mode if not it will set it to silent and turn the media volume to 0% so if you open a social media app it's not going to play a video loudly while you're in the waiting room and likewise if your phone is already silent then it will disable silent mode and turn that media volume up to 50% %. when I run this shortcut I was already in silent mode so you'll actually see the volume goes to 50% and if I check the control center I'm now out of silent mode tap it again and then I'll go into silent mode and that media volume goes to 0% and there's confirmation that I'm in silence a nice way to make sure your phone's not going to make any sounds number six if you want to try a lot of different things with the action button you can actually quickly jump to that settings page with

5:23 this URL scheme you just use the action open URL you type this or copy and paste it or just download this short in the description and then whenever you run this shortcut it will actually go to the action button settings if you do the shortcuts folder like I showed you at the beginning it's a nice one just to have permanently there so you can jump to the action button settings whenever you'd like number seven if you have multiple Focus modes and you want to be able to quickly access whichever you'd like I have one action here and it's actually the set Focus action I'm going to read it so you can see what it's like to build it choose the set Focus action and then instead of turn I'm actually going to tap the word turn and change it to toggle then I can choose a specific Focus mode if you want to just directly go into one or you can choose to ask each time and then you can choose what Focus mode will be enabled I'll go out

6:08 of my filming Focus mode just for now and if I run the focus action you'll see a menu automatically of all the focus modes you have programmed I can choose a focus mode like filming and now I'm in my filming Focus mode and because we chose to toggle as the first action I can run the same action again tap the filming Focus mode and now it's going to toggle it off quick way to enable or dis disable Focus modes with the action button also another great menu you can have on the action button are homekit scenes here I've started with a choose with menu action and then listed multiple homekit scenes ones that I use very often and then under each menu item I have a set home control action to run that particular scene you can use the voice assistant to do this but I actually think it's pretty fast to do the action button tap a scene and you run it automatically and now we're going to get into some multi-step shortcuts

6:54 you can program for the action button this is a shortcut I created recently during one of the shortcuts re EST videos where I build shortcuts that you ask for you can see the latest video on that up here and I know it's been a minute since I've done a request video but subscribe because it's coming soon once all the iPhone 16 stuff is a little pasted so what this shortcut does it actually pulls your next calendar event from a specific calendar gets the location if you have an address attached to that event gets driving directions from your current location to the event location starts pre- makak a text says sorry running late be there in and then it will pull that travel time automatically and then the final action we can add is send message this could work with WhatsApp Google Voice Facebook Messenger even but we'll use the stock texting app because you know iOS 18 has RCS now we'll add that send message

7:41 action expand it and if you want this text to send without any action on your part pun intended you can toggle this off and it will just send in the background I'm going to keep that toggled on so we can actually see it run again make sure you have it set to a calendar that you want here or you can also select all calendars so whatever the next event is across everything it'll pull that address now when I run this shortcut it's going to get my driving time to the next address for that next event and look automatically populated a text sorry running late be there in 33 minutes apparently I'm running very late but you can also customize this to just automatically send your home ETA to a significant other getting your current location driving directions to home and then sending a text be home in certain amount of minutes I'll put a link to that shortcut down in the video description as well but when you run that you see I'll be home in 3 seconds because it's

8:26 to my house but anyway if you want to download that home ETA shortcut it'll be in the description and I have a video walking through how to build it up here next one of the new actions in iOS 18 is actually Journal actions you can create new journal entries and with shortcuts you can actually start with a dictate text action this way you can speak a new journal entry and then it will automatically create it set that to the action button and now you can quickly add journal entries no matter where you are on your phone when you run this shortcut today is iPhone 16 launch day and I'm making a video about great shortcuts for the action button I'll tap stop I can title it hit done and I've automatically created a journal entry with the textt I dictated and a title speaking of dictating notes you can also do that with the Apple notes start with a dictate text action and then create a new note you can choose what folder that note will be a part of and if you expand

9:12 this menu you can even set a name here I've set voice name and then today's date this way it's automatically titled and I don't have to think about it if you program this to the action button the shortcut will run this is a Noe about all the shortcuts that I want to include in the shortcuts actions video things like my clipboard manager super mute and more the first time you run it it'll ask for permission to actually create that note and there's my note with the dictated text and the automatic title that I had set as voice note and today's date and now we're getting into even more advanced shortcuts for the action button the next is a clipboard manager applications can't do things like clipboard managers on iOS or iPad OS just because the way they're locked down so this kind of hacks a clipboard manager and putting it into the action button makes it really convenient so what this does is it gets what's currently on your clipboard and then

9:58 it's going to add that to a third party app called Data jar I'll link that app in the video description takes a second to set up but you would basically create a bucket that will save all these text Snippets and then I have here a choose from menu and it's going to ask are you wanting to copy a previous clipping or save the current if you tap yes I want to get a previous clipping it will pull everything saved to the data jar give you an option and then whatever you select copy that to your clipboard and I'm actually already saving what's on your clipboard with this action up here so if you choose just no save current it won't do anything let's actually program this to the action button to see how it works let's say I'm in a note like this with all the links to the shortcuts I'm going to be putting in the video description if I hit copy here on the clipboard now I'll hold the action button I'll see the menu pop up and say do you want to grab a previous clipping

10:44 or just save the current one I'm going to choose no save current so it doesn't look like anything happened but if I run the action button again now it'll say do you want to grab a previous clipping and I say yes you'll see the last text that I copied here at the top of the list or if I want to grab something previously I'll choose one of my past clippings and now if I go to paste it should paste whatever you just selected a little bit of a hacky way to do a clipboard manager on your iPhone but it works well with the action button these two shortcuts here can actually change what the action button does depending on Focus mode or time of day so here I start with get the current Focus mode if the name of that Focus mode is filming and just so you know when you add an if statement like this you can tap here where it says name and it might say Focus instead well just change it to name this way you can

11:31 actually typee the name of your focus mode and you don't need that extra step of adding a text block and so on so now it says that if the focus mode is in filming show the remote control for an Apple TV if that Focus mode is not enabled then do something else that's play Fantasy from earthwind and fire so if I run this shortcut because I'm in my filming Focus mode it open the Apple TV remote now if I disable my focus mode now it should play Fantasy by Earth one and fire I'll hit play and sure enough it started fantasy so using that if statement you can change what the action button does depending on what Focus mode is active similarly you can decide what the action button does Depending on time of date here I started with a format current date and when you format the date you can actually have it be in 24-hour time you do have to choose date

12:16 custom date format and then two Capital H's which is 24-hour format and then you have to add an if statement that if the formatted date is greater than a certain number so if you want it to be at 1: p.m. or after do this you would have to say it's greater than 12 because the next thing greater than 12 is 13 or 1 p.m. I actually had to do some finagling to change some actions around so if you want this particular one just grab a VI the link down below but now when I run this shortcut if it's before 10000 p.m. then it's going to play Fantasy by thr and fire which it did right there and if it's after 1: p.m. then it'll start a voice conversation with chat GPT if I change this number I'm going to put 8 because right now it's actually 9:31 so if it's greater than 8 meaning 9 or later it should do start a voice conversation with chat GPT I'll press

13:01 play and sure enough it worked so that's how you can have the action button do something different depending on time of day just change this number to be the hour of the day in 24-hour time of when you would like that action to change and a great update to if actions in iOS 18 is you is you can actually add multiple conditionals so if you want it to be after a certain time and during a specific Focus mode you can actually add that conditional here choose current Focus tap where it says icon and choose name name but if I change this to all and turn off my focus mode now when it runs it's going to play Fantasy because even though the time of day is after 8:00 a.m. I'm not in my filming Focus so you can now have multiple conditionals to have the action button do even more things per time of day Focus mode and other options all right and finally this

13:48 is actually what I've had my action button set to for probably the past 6 months it is a one action shortcut and all it is is using the seek action to go forward by 3 minutes with whatever I'm listening to on my iPhone I use this for when I'm listening to podcasts and so when the ad break start I know it's probably going to be a longer ad break in some of the shows I listen to so if I hit play it's just going to skip forward 3 minutes and literally that simple so those are 15 shortcuts for your new iPhone 16 action button and some bonus tips as well if you want to see all those apps that now have control center actions check out my video right up here and if you haven't yet make sure you subscribe to the channel before you go and hit that like button lots of shortcuts videos already on the channel I'll put that playlist actually right up here and if you have a shortcuts requests leave those comments below I promise I'm getting to another shortcuts request video very soon and

14:34 there's also going to be a ton of iPhone 16 accessory content iOS 18 content is already on the channel so be sure to check all of that out thank you for watching I'll catch you next time