Does anyone actually use the Shortcuts app effectively? What for?

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-use-siri-shortcuts-to-record-a-police-encounter

Truly, you are doing God‘s work, my son. And by God I do mean mighty Cthulhu, of course.

i use one to notify me my phone battery has reached 80% while charging.

i would like to use another to auto-delete spam sms (since apple's spamguards are nowhere near as effective as any android messaging app), but that's not something which can be set up.

but otherwise i have no use-case for shortcuts.

Agree 100%. To keep things fair and balanced though, I will say I do really like the auto delete texted security codes feature. Even if sometimes they do vanish before I get to them, and then are deleted never to be seen again. It happens rarely enough that it’s worth the sacrifice. Not that a sacrifice should really be required because this is Apple and it should just work.

I actually use it to keep my kindergartner out of the settings app. It just sends them to the calculator app instead. I may have about six months left before they figure out how to get around it.

When I used a MagSafe mount in my car, I had a shortcut triggered by connecting to the car Bluetooth to automatically turn off the screen rotation lock so I could have my screen in landscape automatically. When the car was turned off, it would revert to portrait and screen rotation locked.

I had hoped to get it to work with our chamberlain garage door openers, but Chamberlain doesn’t play nice with HomeKit anymore.

You, Sir/Madame/Other, are a genius of the highest order, and are deserving of many awards. Sadly, I have none to give, but I give them in spirit.
For your kindergartner, look into locking apps behind Face ID/Touch ID.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/lock-or-hide-or-an-app-iph00f208d05/ios

I have three automations related to my sleep schedule that send the current state to Home Assistant, which I then use to automate scene transitions in my bedroom:

I use it to refresh my apps installed via SideStore every couple days. They’d need manual intervention every 7 days otherwise. Works like a charm, now I have YouTube with adblock and sponsor block.

I also use it to turn my Apple Watch to cinema mode (screen off) whenever I enable the ”super quiet, don’t even buzz” mode on my phone when I’m bringing the little one to bed. And the watch goes back to normal when I turn off that mode.

I use a pair to set low power mode any time my phone is off charger.

I have another that opens Spotify whenever I connect to my Bluetooth speaker.

I’ve used it to quickly play downloaded songs using Siri in my car. Trying to navigate by hand to “music > Songs > Downloaded > Shuffle” is like venturing through a Minotaur maze while driving.

Well, this is a good idea. Can you share your shortcut program? I just moved to Northern Maine, so streaming music is not super reliable when driving. I tell Siri to play things from my library, which in theory should play quickly and seamlessly, but there’s a huge delay before every song. I don’t understand what causes it. Because that shit is downloaded onto my phone. It should just work. Although actually I’m planning to just use a third-party app and rebuild my library. I’ve downloaded a ton of .flac music. Perfectly legally of course; how dare you question me.

I use it to send links to my server over SSH

Just…links? I’m not sure I’m following?
- I share link to a list via SSH. The server downloads things from the list. I see the files from anywhere, kind of my cloud.

I have a bunch.

Launch Waze and turn off WiFi when I connect to Bluetooth in my car

Turn down the volume on one of my headsets when I connect, since otherwise it blasts my ear drums

I use Federico Vittici’s multi button for my action button: one press turns on the flashlight, press again within five seconds does something else.

Pull my next appointment and give me directions to it

Check a price on KEEPA or camelcamelcamel without using an extension, just share from that URL and run the shortcut

Delete all my disabled alarms, leaving those that are still active.

Play a random music album

Find the album of the currently playing song and play the whole album.

Backup all my tabs in safari to a file

Send the newest photo to a contact of my choice (works great voice-only)

I am very interested in several of these. Would you be willing to make posts here for any of them? That would be huge. I can pay in lemmingbucks. They are totally legitimate, don’t question it.
- Here’s a few: Open the “hide my email” in iCloud settings: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ca706ce969a4410dadf68240fa0854ab
  Delete disabled alarms: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8294b2d3dca6477682194b5f8da053de
  “safari Tabs backup” - look on routinehub, it might be https://routinehub.co/shortcut/16529/
  (That’s one of my music shortcuts - let me know what else I can share)
  Looking forward to combining my lemmybucks and fake internet points!