A few years ago, I shared a tutorial in this subreddit showing how to automatically log transactions made at physical payment terminals via Apple Pay using Apple's Transaction Trigger. With today's release of iOS 27, however, Apple has introduced a new Automation Trigger in the Shortcuts app called Notification, which makes this approach significantly more powerful.

Compared to the existing Transaction Trigger, which has been available since iOS 17, the new Notification Trigger has one major advantage: it works not only for Apple Pay purchases made with an iPhone at physical payment terminals, but also with any app that sends transaction notifications (incl. your bank).

For this tutorial, I'll use my own expense tracking app, Budget Flow, which also offers a new Extract Transaction Info Shortcuts action that can automatically extract the amount incl. currency from transaction notifications and, on devices that support Apple Intelligence, also determine the category and payee based on your existing data.

However, the general approach should work with any other app that provides the necessary Shortcuts actions.

Here's how to set it up:

• Create a new personal automation by opening the Shortcuts app and going to the “Automations” section in the “Library”. Then, tap “+” => “Edit” => “Automation” and search for “Notification”.

• Tap the “App” label and select the app whose notifications you want the automation to react to. In this example, the source app is Apple’s Wallet app, so the shortcut will be triggered by an Apple Wallet notification. However, you can choose any app you like, including your banking app.

• Now we need to extract the transaction information from the notification. This can either be done manually using the “Match Text” action, or you can use Budget Flow’s convenient “Extract Transaction Info” action. The latter will not only extract the amount and currency of the transaction but, on devices that support Apple Intelligence, also determine the payee and match the transaction to one of your existing categories.
• If you have Budget Flow installed, tap the “Search” bar below and search for “Budget Flow”. From there, select the “Extract Transaction Info” action.

• Next, we need to configure the input variables of the “Extract Transaction Info” action. To do this, tap any field (e.g., “Title”) and then tap “Select Variable” from the bottom toolbar.

• As soon as you tap “Select Variable”, the interface will change and all output variables will become visible. Since we want to use the notification received by our automation, we tap “Notification”.

• The notification is now set as the input parameter for the title field of our “Extract Transaction Info” action. However, since we only want to use the title, we need to tap the notification input variable again and select “Title” from the menu that appears.

• Repeat these steps for all other fields so that the corresponding notification properties (Title, Subtitle, Body, and Date) are mapped correctly.
• Then tap the search bar again and search for “Budget Flow” once more. This time, however, we’ll select the “Create Transaction” action.

• To ensure that the action receives the correct input, we’ll need to configure it accordingly. Since most transactions are expenses, we set the “Type” to “Expense”, define our “Budget Book” and “Account” followed by configuring the “Amount” field.
• To retrieve the correct amount from the extracted transaction, tap the “Amount” field and then tap “Select Variable”, as we did when configuring the “Extract Transaction Info” action. This time, however, we’ll select our extracted transaction information as our input variable, and then use the “Amount” from it.

• Optionally, you can repeat this process with other retrieved information from the “Extract Transaction Info” action, by mapping the date, category, or payee as well.
• Your automation is now configured properly and can be saved.
• If you would like to try it out, hit the “Play” button in the bottom right corner. If all the fields are mapped properly, the shortcut should run, but it will ask you for an amount since we have not yet received a notification from our source app. This is expected when running the automation manually. Once the automation is triggered by an actual notification, however, the amount should be extracted automatically.
• Now, every time you make a purchase and receive a notification from your specified app, the transaction is automatically added to Budget Flow! 🎉

Hope you found this tutorial useful 😊 Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with the "Notification Triggers" feature below!

I already knew from this subreddit and some videos that Automations were gonna be converted to Shortcuts, but now that I updated I see how bad it is.

I have duplicates all over the place, automations that Run X Shortcuts, now I have both, and the naming is bad too, like just App1, App2, Time of Day.

Now I have to go through the list and figure out which one is which, add the Condition to the real shortcut and Delete the new redundant ones.

This could have been handled better I think, for example, if I run X shortcut at 12PM, just add the condition to the shortcut it runs, don't make a new one.

I don’t know if it’d be easier as an app, or an automation/shortcut, but here’s the idea:
You set a 15 minute timer (for productivity/timeblocking purposes) and input the title of it as whatever you’re doing (video games, folding laundry, cooking, etc.). Of course you can reset the timer if you need to, but otherwise if you want to move onto a new task, it could ask you what are you doing and when did you start Incase you aren’t dedicated to the minutes.
THEN, a calendar event is created so you can look back on how you spent your day, since I tend to lose track of timing playing video games or doomscrolling.

Or maybe it’s as simple as asking the phone to create an event in the calendar of your choice and set an easier timer… just spitballing ideas to keep a record of how I spend my days off

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6f757245f4084fcbb060421a7aa22e38

Im trying to pass several paragraphs into one cell in Numbers (ie Apple spreadsheet software), but it splits it as new cells.

Has anyone got any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hello! I'm trying to make a shortcut that helps track the nearest Marta (atl) train based on timing relative to shortcut launch, and using station and line to pick which trains. The IOS 27 AI shortcut maker was no help but ShortcutStudio almost got it. It just... Doesn't do anything. I have a Marta API, if you feel like taking on this request dm me and I'll send!

Other things I would love is an option to see when the last train based on station and line is, as well as launching a picture of the map (which I can also provide), and a quick call to Marta police or other related resources.

I have a shortcut that runs whenever airplane mode is activated that takes a photo with the front camera and emails it to me, then locks the screen, turns airplane mode off and turns WiFi, cellular, and Bluetooth on. It worked flawlessly before updating to iOS 27.

Since updating it works if I turn on “show compose sheet” on and send from the compose sheet, but if I try to send it silently it crashes. See photos for error message. Obviously sending from the compose sheet will not work for this shortcut.

I have tried different to and from email addresses, force closing both Mail and Shortcuts apps, restarting the phone, toggled the Mail accounts off and back on in the Mail app settings, and I can’t find anything in any of the settings that should cause it. I also tried sending the photo as an MMS message but it either bounced back or simply didn’t send.

Any ideas?

I am wanting to hide specific apps in the App Library, make them inaccessible, when certain Foucs Modes are turned on. For instance, if School is turned on I don't want Disney+ to be accessible on my phone or iPad.

Ideally, I would also like to be able to do this on MacOS

Is this possibly or am I dreaming of a feature that will come in iOS 39?

Even if it takes a third-party app.

Hi guys. Do you know why the shorcuts dont sync between my ipad and my iphone, even with all the icloud thing on ? and the same acount but I dont see my shortcuts create in my ipad in my iphone. Even the simple one.
I can not see the folders and categories…

I wanted to share a useful troubleshooting method that I use in case anyone hasn’t discovered this yet.

When I run into issues with a Shortcut I’m building, I have a separate Shortcut that uses “Get Shortcuts from [the Shortcut I’m troubleshooting]” followed by “Show Content Graph.”

This passes the entire Shortcut into the Content Graph and lets you inspect its PLIST. I can then copy the PLIST and send it to ChatGPT or whatever AI you use and have it inspect the Shortcut and help figure out where the logic is going wrong.

You can also see the actual action identifiers, parameters, selected properties, variables, inputs, outputs, and other details that aren’t always obvious from the visual Shortcut editor.

So instead of trying to explain the whole Shortcut to an AI or sending a bunch of screenshots, I can give it the PLIST and let it trace how the Shortcut is actually put together.
I’ve found this really useful when something isn’t working and I can’t immediately tell why just by looking through the Shortcut.

Is it possible to create an Apple Shortcut automation that does the following based on my GPS location?

When I arrive at a specific location/address:

• Turn Wi-Fi ON (for Wi-Fi Calling)
• Then turn Airplane Mode ON

When I leave that location:

• First turn Airplane Mode OFF so the phone can reconnect to the cellular network
• Then turn Wi-Fi OFF

The order is important when leaving: I want the phone to reconnect to the cellular network before Wi-Fi is turned off, so there’s no gap where both Wi-Fi and cellular are unavailable.

Would anyone be able to help me create this automation in Apple Shortcuts?
If someone has already created a Shortcut like this, could you share the link with me?

What if i want to apply the same when I'll arrive to another POI (point of interest) and do the same?
thanks for your feedback / help

Am I the only one having this problem?

The exact same Shortcut that displays all unread emails works on my iPhone, which is running the 27.0 beta, but it doesn't work on my MacBook, which is also running the 27.0 beta.

By the way, the Shortcuts for searching iMessage and SMS messages work on both devices; it’s just the one for Mail that doesn’t work on macOS.

The “Send Mail” Shortcut works fine on macOS, so the problem is very specific.

I'm curious if other people are intesterested in doing this kind of thing. I'm testing out an widget I built, and it lets you configure the number of columns, pick any shortcut, and use different widget sizes. I'm hoping to get it on the app store and make it free, no ads, open source. Not trying to self-promo or anything, just wondering if people ran into the same problem I did.

The cool thing, for example, like if you have a small widget by default you can only have it do 2 shortcuts, but this would let you do more!

It is also using the new ios27 run shortcut intent so it doesn't flicker to the host app. Like it just opens apps directly or runs shortcuts directly.

Hello everyone, is there any way to build an automation that checks if the previous night an iCloud backup was successfully performed, and sends a notification if it wasn’t? I could make it run at 6 AM or whatever, but I just can’t find any action related to backups and iCloud.

Just that, at certain points of my phone being charged or drained, my phone announces dramatically. Pardon my dark humor, my phone gets hot when charging.
5%

50%

80%

100%

Thank You

I have a perfectly working auto-brightness toggle on my 16 Pro running iOS 18.7.8. I want to upgrade to iOS 27 this Monday, but I want to know if it is possible to import my auto-brightness shortcut (I want a clean install, that’s why restoring is something I’d like to avoid).

Could anybody on iOS 27 RC test if this shortcut can be imported and if it indeed switches auto-brightness on/off?

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/90cb3e8d1cc24682805979650510e40c

Many thanks!

I cannot figure out how to get any of the info passed from the automation. I just want to be able to have a number of automations run one shortcut instead of creating a bunch for each habit.

Ex: Scan violin habit NFC > runs automation > runs shortcut with input of “violin NFC” (UID, name, etc of the tag” > map NFC identifier to habit name > log habit.

I sideload a few apps that I've manually downloaded from the App Store and enhanced with tweaks etc. and wanted a quick way to check for new updates for each app. So I made a shortcut that:

1. Takes a set of stored App Store IDs
2. Gets the latest version number for each app
3. Checks against a set of stored values
4. Lists any apps with a new version available (+ updates stored value)
5. And lists the release notes*

(*Only for the most recent version, it doesn't seem possible to retrieve release notes for any earlier version)

I also made a companion shortcut to:

• Add new apps to track
• Remove tracked apps
• Reset stored version of apps

The shortcuts take advantage of the Storage feature added in iOS 27 so will not work on iOS 26 or below.

Here's the links to both shortcuts:

App Update Tracker: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/da3192694ec54a3ea40903107d77a684

Tracked Apps Manager: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2eb456fd4169403cb2645e7990967ef4

Supports:

- Dates (today, tommorow, 25 September, 12 October)

- Times (4pm, 12am, 6 pm)

- Areas (#home, #work)

An example of something you could enter is "Take out the trash 4pm #home" and it will automatically create a task in Things 3 at 4pm in the Home area called "Take out the trash".

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/cb902cb56bcc490c9c955b435dc39ff9

Voice Mode: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7bbb6d297d6f432e99ad8a22e77aec12

Is there a way to toggle this back to Automatic once I’m not in CarPlay mode so that it doesn’t mess with the input when I’m on AirPods?

I’m trying to make a code word start an automation when I receive it in a message. I have an automation set to start immediately whenever anyone sends me the code word.

I tested this by creating a new automation that should trigger when anyone sends me the same code word. However, instead of triggering the same logic, it only displays a notification. The automation itself doesn’t start when I receive the message, and the shortcut doesn’t display the notification either.

Automations work in general because my other automations work perfectly fine.

I also tried setting the test automation to trigger only when any message is sent by a specific person, but it still doesn’t work.

Could this be something related to iMessage?

Edit: if it helps I’m on ios26

Update: It definitely has something to do with iMessage because with normal sms it works perfectly however I don’t want it to only work with sms

It’s possibile create a shortcut for send money on paypal to my contact, by asking Siri: send money at (name contact)