</a

Some time ago on Twitter I stumbled across Simon, he was retweeted by the developer of Working Copy, an app I love and use heavily - and the retweet was a video of a script being run on an iPhone and returning some pretty cool results - so I asked “what is this and how can I get a copy?”. Not too long later I was invited to the beta of Scriptable, and got stuck in.

Scriptable is an iOS 12 app, and has integration with Siri Shortcuts to help you automate to the max. Simon has integrated a huge number of iOS APIs - so you can get your current location, communicate directly with the calendar, and more. The app also uses native UI elements too - so if you write a script that shows an alert the JavaScript you write calls the native alert box.

So, what can you do with this app? The built in examples include getting the current Slack status, grabbing the latest XKCD comic, and viewing shared JSON in a readable format. There are many more sample scripts over on the Automators Forums</a

where I host a community run forum for the app (what better home than with Automators?).

You can also trigger Scriptable scripts in any number of ways. When you tap the settings icon inside of a script you get the option to immediately add the script to Siri, you can copy the URL scheme to the app, and even add it directly to Launch Center Pro</a

which will then let you trigger notifications to run it at specific times or places.

All of your scripts are donated to Siri too, which means they’re available in the Shortcuts app as well.

You can get Scriptable</a

on the App Store now - and it’s free which is insane, so please make use of the tip jar!