How to Create Shortcuts on iPhone and iPad in 2026 (With AI-Powered Actions)

The Shortcuts app has been on iPhone and iPad for years, but if you haven’t opened it lately, you’re missing out. What started as a basic tap-to-automate tool has quietly grown into one of the most capable apps Apple ships, and with iOS 26, it now has genuine AI muscle behind it.

This guide walks you through building your first shortcut from scratch, covers the new AI-powered actions worth knowing about, and points you toward some ready-made shortcuts that are actually useful.

Where to Find the Shortcuts App

Shortcuts comes pre-installed on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 26 or iPadOS 26. If you’ve deleted it at some point, search for Shortcuts in the App Store, it’s free.

Once you open it, you’ll land on the My Shortcuts tab. Fresh installs will be empty. Tap the + button in the top-right corner to create your first one.

How to Build a Shortcut From Scratch

A shortcut is a chain of actions that run in sequence. You pick the actions, set any variables or conditions, and then trigger the whole thing with a tap, a Siri command, or an automation.

Here’s a straightforward example: a shortcut that calls a specific contact with one tap.

Step 1: Open the Shortcut Editor

Tap + on the My Shortcuts screen. You’ll land in the shortcut editor, which shows an empty canvas and a search bar at the bottom for finding actions.

Step 2: Add a Contacts Action

Tap Add Action and search for Find Contacts. Select it. This action lets you pull a specific person from your contacts. In iOS 26, you can now filter by relationship (Family, Work, etc.), which is a nice addition.

Step 3: Specify the Contact

Tap the Find Contacts action block and configure it to match a specific person. Tap Add Filter, choose Name, and type the contact’s name.

Step 4: Add a Call Action

Tap + below the Contacts block and search for Call. Select it. The shortcut will now find your contact and immediately call them. You can swap Call for FaceTime, Send Message, or any of the other communication actions if that’s more useful.

Step 5: Name and Configure the Shortcut

Tap the shortcut name at the top (it defaults to the first action’s name) to rename it. Tap the settings icon (the slider icon in the top-right of the editor) to access additional options:

• Add to Home Screen, puts a tappable icon directly on your home screen
• Add to Siri, lets you trigger it with a voice phrase
• Pin in Shortcuts Widget, surfaces it in the Shortcuts widget on your Home Screen or Lock Screen
• Icon and color, iOS 26 now includes 100+ new icon glyphs to choose from

Step 6: Save and Run It

Tap Done. Your shortcut appears in the library. Tap it once to run it, or use whatever trigger you set up in Step 5.

That’s the basics. From here, the shortcut builder scales as far as you want to take it. You can chain dozens of actions, add conditionals, use variables, and loop through lists.

The New AI-Powered Actions in iOS 26

This is where Shortcuts gets genuinely interesting in 2026. Apple Intelligence is now woven directly into the action library, and some of these are worth building workflows around.

Writing and Text Actions

There’s a full suite of text-manipulation actions now:

• Rewrite Text, rewrites a block of text in a different style
• Adjust Tone of Text, makes text more formal, casual, friendly, etc.
• Proofread Text, catches grammar and spelling issues
• Summarize Text, condenses long content into a summary
• Make List from Text, extracts bullet points from a block of prose
• Make Table from Text, turns structured text into a table

A practical use case: a shortcut that grabs the clipboard, summarizes it, and sends the summary to Notes. Three actions, genuinely useful.

The “Use Model” Action

This one’s the most powerful addition. The Use Model action lets you send a prompt directly to Apple Intelligence, or to ChatGPT if you’ve connected it, from inside a shortcut. You can pass in variables, get a response back, and pipe that response into the next action.

This is the action that makes Shortcuts feel like a proper automation platform rather than a glorified macro recorder.

Photos Actions

Three new Photos actions: Search Photos (find images by content or date), Create New Memory (build a memory from a set of photos), and a significantly expanded filter system for the existing photo library actions.

Visual Intelligence

The new Open Visual Intelligence action launches Visual Intelligence pointed at whatever context you pass in. Niche, but useful if you’re building shortcuts around image recognition workflows.

Installing Shortcuts Made by Others

You don’t have to build everything yourself. The Shortcuts community is active, and there are solid ready-made automations worth grabbing. A few worth installing:

• Share Your Wi-Fi Password, generates a QR code from your current Wi-Fi network that guests can scan to connect. The Create QR Code action now supports color and style customization in iOS 26, so these look a lot better than they used to. (Install it here, open on iPhone or iPad only)
• Only Show Certain Photos, lets you select specific photos from your library to show someone without giving them free rein over your Camera Roll. (Install it here)
• Flight Prep, switches on Airplane Mode, Low Power Mode, and Do Not Disturb simultaneously. One tap before boarding.
• Summarize Clipboard, uses the new Summarize Text action to condense whatever’s on your clipboard. Build this one yourself in about 30 seconds.

For community shortcuts, RoutineHub is the best directory. Shortcuts are versioned and maintained there, which matters more than you’d think.

Shortcuts Syncs Across All Your Devices

Any shortcut you create syncs automatically via iCloud to your other devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. The Mac version of Shortcuts in macOS 26 also supports personal automations triggered by time of day, file-saving events, and more, so a shortcut you build on your iPhone can have a richer trigger set when it runs on your Mac.

A Few Things Worth Knowing

• Shortcuts run locally by default. When you use Use Model with Apple Intelligence, processing stays on-device for supported models. ChatGPT requests go to OpenAI’s servers, and Shortcuts will tell you before sending anything.
• You can run shortcuts from the Share Sheet in any app, which opens up a lot of possibilities for processing content you’re looking at right now.
• The Calculate Expression action now handles unit conversions including live currency rates, temperature, and distance, which is handy if you’re building travel or shopping shortcuts.
• Siri can trigger any shortcut by name. If your shortcut is called “Morning Briefing,” saying “Hey Siri, Morning Briefing” runs it.

Shortcuts has come a long way from the basic tap-to-call automations of 2019. The AI action layer in iOS 26 makes it genuinely worth spending an afternoon with, especially if you do a lot of writing or research on your phone. Start with something small, get a feel for how actions chain together, and you’ll quickly find yourself automating things you didn’t know were automatable.