Shortcuts IOS 17.5, unlimited frustration and damage

I've run into pretty much all of the same issues that you have.
One workaround for supplying text in the actions is to write the text elsewhere and then paste it, but it's a clunky workaround.

Best
M

Confirmed :)

I have problems with this Apple application since v17.

I stopped using it because the frustration when using VO is too much.

Crash the application at many times is the norm.

I've had these issues for a really long time. The "if" one being the most infuriating for me, because it's not specific to any third-party app.

Absolutely send to Apple accessibility about this stuff - I've had success with the shortcuts team before, so it's worth a try.

In the meantime, a couple of workarounds. If you need to type text into those invisible text fields, use a text action. Then when you edit the input, select choose variable. You'll see your whole shortcut with the action outputs you can use as buttons. Select your text action and double tap on it and whatever you've put in the text action is now the value of say that whatsapp message.

As for the if thing, make sure whatever you're testing is directly above the if statement. Even if that means you use a get variable or something. That way it's already filled in and it won't crash. Stupid, yes, but it does work.

And finally, with automations, try to write your automation in a Shortcut and just call that in your automation. That tends to be marginally less annoying.

Honestly, even with all the issues I use Shortcuts a lot and I'd be truly annoyed without it. And as I've said before, this app sucks for everyone, sighted people included. I swear half of Shortcuts reddit is people grumbling about the Shortcuts app. If you're lucky, whatever Shortcut you manage to struggle through writing will get run a heck of a lot more than you'll have to edit it, so I think it's still worth it.

One of the most annoying issues I experience is where not all of the actions appear as I try and create personal automations.
In fact, I typically only see a very select few and when I try and search for actions it doesn't seem to find any results.
No clue what they'd done to break it so badly.

I honestly have very little experience with automations. In spite of the fact that I use various shortcuts I've written multiple times a day, I've only got two or three.

As I said, though, the best way to create them is to create a shortcut that does what you want, then create the automation with the trigger you want and just use a run shortcut action. As annoying as the shortcuts editor is, I think the automations one is even weirder, ☺️. Mostly when it's showing limited actions, it's trying to give you options based on the previous actions in the Shortcut or stuff you do a lot, but I have to admit I almost never use the suggested actions. Not sure why search wouldn't work though.

I also should point out though that not all Shortcuts are designed to be run on their own, either. Particularly these days when the Shortcuts app is such a pain, I've got a lot of Shortcuts that get called from other Shortcuts or automations and never get called by Siri.

It's one of the main ways I make Shortcuts work for me these days - lots of small Shortcuts. It's a pain in the neck to share anything with other people, but a whole lot easier to work with.

When shortcuts first came out, I enjoyed creating custom shortcuts, even though it was a bit of a clunky process using Voiceover. I figured the shortcuts would be useful and that using them with Voiceover would improve over time.

With some perseverance, I managed to create several shortcuts that I used almost every day for several years.

Then when iOS 16 came out, my shortcuts suddenly started breaking, even though I hadn't changed anything. They would work for a few weeks, and then suddenly break.

When iOS 17 came out, I figured some of the issues might have been fixed and was looking forward to having Voiceover play better when editing my shortcuts. So I tried to fix them.

Unfortunately, my optimism about being able to fix my broken shortcuts was not rewarded with success. I found it very difficult to edit the shortcuts using Voiceover and couldn't get anything to work.

So, after years of frustration with the shortcuts app and trying to edit shortcuts using Voiceover, I gave up and no longer use my shortcuts that use to work so well.

The only shortcuts I use these days are shortcuts created by developers that come along with their apps.

Oh well, it was a nice idea, but the implementation went wrong in terms of robust performance and making the shortcuts app accessible using Voiceover.

--Pete

Do your shortcuts contain private information? If not, I'd be curious to take a look at a couple to see what might have broken. I can't think of any huge changes to the way Shortcuts work over the last couple years.
If you're on a phone with a dynamic island though, any shortcut that runs that uses an alert or other UI element breaks until you dismiss the thing that pops up on the dynamic island first, or unless you open the shortcuts app prior to displaying that alert / input field / quick look / whatever.

Interesting to read about others having difficulties using shortcuts which use things like "choose from menu " or interact with the dynamic island.
I've written plenty of shortcuts which use "choose from menu " which work really well on an iPhone without the dynamic island, but it seems almost impossible to interact with the menu on a phone with a dynamic island. Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to make the dynamic island usable with this kind of shortcut command. Thanks

1. When the choose from / get input / quick look / show alert box pops up, touch the dynamic island and swipe down to dismiss. Double tap that, and it will work perfectly for the duration of that shortcut. As soon as that shortcut ends and you run a new one though, you'll have to dismiss the dynamic island thing again.
2. Prior to using the show alert / whatever action, add an open app action and have it open the Shortcuts app. This way, you won't have to deal with the dynamic island at all.

HTH!

Trying this for the first time and it's pretty bad. I'm trying to setup a shortcut with Soro to set the volume of a number of speakers at the same time.

Firstly, when you select the volume it starts at 0. So you change the value and it says 0, swipe up and down to change. But swiping up you just hear 0, 0, 0. However, when I go back I find it has worked and now my volume is 40. Which is crap but workable.

But how do I change the volume by less than 10? So if I want 25% for example? Can this be done?

Well I sort of managed to do it with long press and hold then move up but it feels like it's just a matter of doing the same thing over and over again until you get lucky. Surely a better way?

ANyway guess I'd better email apple again. There is no way to just type a number in is there?

I really tried hard on figuring out shortcuts. But apart from making it simple actions after detecting the chip from my various cards, I couldn't really do any complex automations. My favorate use for shortcuts app to this date is that trick, where I make it either speak the card name, or, open some app after detecting a chip from my ID cards or credit cards.
Even though I don't think my ID card has NFC chip, rather a RF chip, it still detects them.

@Aaron Remirez

Here is one of my custom shortcuts that broke back in iOS 16. I called it "log my run". It asks for when my run started, how long it was, and then speaks out the information so that I can validate its correctness before saying "OK" and having it logged into my workouts.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/a5b2fa8b303f43d690688a452c8da15a

It used to work, then intermittently worked for a while, and then it totally stopped working.

After I say "OK" to validate what it will write to my workout, now it always crashes giving me the very unhelfpul error message that "there was a problem".

Anyway, if you could figure out what is wrong, that would be great. I have sefveral other shortcuts based on this template to log "functional strength training" and "cycling". Not surprisingly, they also used to work but broke.

Thanks for any advice.

--Pete

The work around for the dynamic island issue is to include opening the shortcut app at the start of the shortcut and then add launch homescreen at the end of it.

I'm not the original person you requested help from, but I think I've got a workaround for that shortcut. Basically, it's a bug. You have to put a number in the calories section and it'll work. In this case, if you don't have one or don't care, 0 will work. So just edit it, and put a 0 in calories

yeah, that was the issue.

It's a really stupid issue though because the field is considered Optional. Nice going, Apple!

Well, the docs say it's optional, ☺️. It's possible it's no longer optional and they didn't change them, I guess.

I just wish the error had been something more useful than "there was a problem", yeesh.