An overview of the new Siri Shortcuts feature in iOS 12, and the Shortcuts app, which will be available as a separate app on the App Store this fall
In my Future of Workflow article from last year (published soon after the news of Apple's acquisition), I outlined some of the probable outcomes for the app.
Context & Ripple Effects
When Apple acquired Workflow last year, MacStories' 'Future of Workflow' piece laid out the possible endings; this overview is the first concrete answer. The automation engine survives intact but is rebranded around Siri, with the Shortcuts app shipping separately on the App Store rather than being absorbed into iOS.
The beta hands-ons show what actually changed under Apple's ownership: beyond the familiar Workflow interface, shortcuts can now hook into system events — the kind of OS-level access the independent app never had. And the iOS 12 review singles out Siri Shortcuts as the release's one standout in an otherwise incremental update.
First-order effects
- Users of the original Workflow app get their automations folded into a free, Siri-branded Shortcuts app on the App Store, plus new triggers tied to system events that the beta hands-on flags as the real upgrade over the original tool.
Second-order effects
- Developers gain a reason to expose app actions to Siri's shortcut system, since a shortcut is only as useful as the third-party apps it can chain together — making Siri integration a distribution surface rather than a novelty.
- Accessibility emerges as an unexpected beneficiary: as MacStories' accessibility piece shows, collapsing multi-tap routines into single spoken or one-tap shortcuts reduces friction for disabled users, widening who counts as a power user.
Third-order effects
- If the arc from manual scripting to system-event triggers holds through to Apple's later plan for natural-language, AI-generated workflows in iOS 27, the assistant stops being a command line you memorize and becomes the front door through which all of iOS gets automated.
The trend: Voice assistants are evolving from question-answerers into automation layers, with Apple using Shortcuts to make Siri the entry point for user-built workflows across iOS.