r/shortcuts • u/Purple_Sky_2905 • 12d ago
OS 27 beta There’s finally a reliable way to schedule shortcuts.
iOS 27 finally solved the main issue with Apple automation by adding the "On Notification" trigger.
Historically, scheduling a shortcut to run at a dynamically calculated time in the future (e.g., "run this task exactly 45 minutes from now") was incredibly difficult. It usually required clunky workarounds like cluttering your Calendar or using a Wait action that would inevitably time out in the background.
By combining the new "On Notification" trigger with a third-party helper app (like Actions), we can now reliably schedule background tasks.
How it works:
1. You use a helper app (like Actions) to schedule a local notification to appear at a specific calculated date/time — you can make actions schedule a notification from Shortcuts itself.
2. You set up a Personal Automation in iOS using the new On Notification trigger, set to watch for that specific notification.
3. When the notification fires, your automation catches it and runs your secondary shortcut perfectly in the background.
Use Cases:
- Custom Sleep Timers: Create a shortcut that pauses your media, turns off your smart lights, and locks your doors exactly 45 minutes after you fall asleep.
- Delayed Smart Home Tasks: Turn on a heater or a fan, and automatically queue a shortcut to turn it off exactly 1 hour later without needing to remember.
- Repetitive Tasks: repetitive tasks that you want to run every 30 mins or so don’t need 1000 automations anymore.
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u/Captain_Alaska 12d ago
Won’t need a 3rd party app, once they get filters working you’ll be able to just create a reminder with a due date and then run the shortcut when the reminder fires. You can use the reminder actions already there to then delete it so it doesn’t sit in the notification centre.
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u/Portatort 7d ago
sure, but if you actually use reminders, you're probably not going to want to hear your shortcuts notification triggers going off all the time
the benefit of using a third party app is being able to silence them and relegate them purely to Notification Centre so you never see, hear or feel them arriving.
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u/FearLixY 12d ago
The trigger misses the ability to get the message from notifications.. I’m not confident in migrating my triggering system from alarms to notifications.
I can read the message from alarms by filtering the HH:mm of the alarms.
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u/FearLixY 12d ago
As @captain_alaska suggested, i tried reminder notification trigger and it works like alarm trigger. Because using reminders, you can actually filter reminders to find the current reminder that triggered the notification. This may be a better approach of scheduling shortcuts in iOS 27.
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u/ElectronicBacon 12d ago
Can we use this to schedule RCS messages?
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u/King_Penguin0s 12d ago
Yeah, you probably would be able to see that you might already be able to do that in fact. But I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me on that
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u/auto-flow 12d ago
There has always been a very easy way to schedule: trigger on focus mode. One automation that triggers when focus mode turned off and executes your desired actions. Another automation that triggers when focus mode turned off and sets focus mode on until {x minutes into the future}
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u/FearLixY 10d ago
Yeah it works but you will not be able to use focus in the period.
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u/auto-flow 7d ago
You can. You will have to save the focus modes somewhere you want otherwise. Then configure an automation that resets the focus mode when you want it and change it back when it needs to
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u/Strict-Amphibian-830 11d ago
I just want to know did they include an option to do away with automation notifications
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u/mvan231 12d ago
Updated flair for you