Apple shortcuts app complicated to work with using VO.

Ok, you're right, Shortcuts is tricky to work with, but it's doable with some patience. I've got a proper detailed post brewing on this - I was waiting for 18 before starting it.

Anyway, the immediate problem, moving actions. You're right, drag and drop's all but useless. I have used it, but only for small distances, since once the action is dropped, there's no easy way to see *where* it got dropped without flicking around. Not really helpful.

Move up and move down *do* seem to actually work, the problem is that screen refresh isn't instant. In other words, sometimes if you move an action up or down and then immediately swipe left and right, it looks like the action is still where it was. Lift your hand and put it down again and you can usually see that the action has moved.

The other built in way to move an action is copy and paste. Tap action, select copy. Tap action again and delete it, go to where you want the action, then tap action and choose paste above or paste below, whichever you need.

The final way to move actions is to use a 3rd party shortcut. The one I'm using right now is called copy +++ and it's on routinehub. Let me know if you want a link. Anyway, this one is good for moving multiple actions or merging two shortcuts together. Put a comment that contains +++ at the top of the group of actions you want to move, and another at the bottom. If you run copy +++ and specify the shortcut with the comment, it puts what's inside the comments on the clipboard. Then just go and paste the block where you need it, either elsewhere in the same shortcut or in another shortcut.

Anyway, with all this, my tips are
make your shortcuts small chunks of functionality and call them from each other - they'll be easier to edit later.
Try to do stuff in sequential order so you can just drop actions one after the other - if you can't, use copy and paste a lot. As I said, I'm writing this and a bunch of other stuff up and I'll try to post it somewhere.

Oh, and it should go without saying, write a note to apple accessibility with as detailed a bug report as you can. I've actually had quite a lot of luck getting stuff fixed in Shortcuts, so it's definitely worth a try.

Well that's the problem, there really is no solution to distribution. Once you've split them up you just have to share all the parts and give people multiple links. If you absolutely have to, I guess the solution is to develop the chunks in individual shortcuts and then paste them together, but the main shortcut will probably still be annoying to work with. For myself I've just decided to make it more complicated to distribute if I ever want to so I can comfortably edit them.

Obviously, you should try to break things up in a way that makes sense, sort of like functions or modules in a real programming language, ☺️. Also, putting a group like that into a folder helps so it's easier to work on.

Anyway, Copy ++ is at
https://routinehub.co/shortcut/18369/

Thank you for these great tips. I'm using the shortcut app since iOS 13 to create my own shortcuts. I played a lot with the shortcut app with iOS 13. VoiceOver was perfectly working with the shortcut app, each action was defined as a heading, it was easy to navigate between actions, menus added to shortcuts were easy to navigate with VO when launching the shortcut, Etc. I'm just thinking about custom menus (I did one for my action button on a 15 pro), the focus of VoiceOver will sometime get stuck, flicking left or right will not always let me focus on a clickable item of the menu, which by the way those items are no longer recognized as button by VO. Explore by touch is more reliable than the regular VO gestures. When iOS 14 was launched, a lot of things got broken regarding the shortcut app accessibility with VO. With iOS 15, headings were removed on actions, which was really helpful to quickly navigate during the shortcut creation. It seems that the accessibility of the app is getting worse version after version. It is still usable of course, I’m still creating shortcuts on a regular basis, but this may need to be improved.

You were talking about the drag and drop feature. I was using that feature quite often prior iOS 18 to quickly move an action at the top or bottom of a shortcut. When VO was saying that the action was draggable, a double tap and hold will let me move the action, and VoiceOver was providing I think was click sound or even probably haptic feedback. Since iOS 18, if I double tap and hold where VO announces that the item is draggable, the more action menu will be opened instead. The best way I found to use the drag and drop is now to do it on the button allowing to delete an action from a shortcut, but this is pretty unreliable. Any tip to use the drag and drop comfortably with iOS 18 by using the double tap and hold? I can at least confirm that the move up and move down rotor actions are working fine on my 15 pro running iOS 18.0.

This being said, thanks for the link to the copy +++ shortcut, I’ll give it a try for sure.

One other interesting thing I discovered with shortcut on iOS 18, if we tap the search field by mistake, there is no easy way to get out of it. I checked with a sighted person, and there is a special gesture to close the search box. With VO, I found that double taping and holding the top of the screen where the search text field is and sliding the finger down will dismiss the search screen. The two fingers scrub gesture has no effect to close the search popup.

Lastly, if someone has an idea on how to access the pined action section, I’ll be happy to get more info about it, pined actions don’t seem to be really intuitive with VO.

Ok. Keeping in mind I haven't actually done much with shortcuts since 18, I've got at least a couple of answers, I think.

Keep in mind I'm using an iPad pro here, I don't have an iPhone that can run a recent version of iOS at the moment, although I hope this changes, so if you're using an iPhone some of this might be different or not work.

First, getting trapped in the search box. As far as I can see, double tapping on cancel should get you out of it. In fact, this also gets you back to the first action screen if you've tapped on scripting or web or something.

That's also where the pinned actions seem to be. On the iPad at least, first there are the action sections, then under that the actions you've pinned and under that the actions associated with different apps. Kind of a different way to arrange the actions library, but at least on first look makes some sense.

I'm not sure about the action button menu problem. I've actually created myself something similar to that on my Ipad which I've associated with a Voiceover gesture, and I'm just using either choose from menu or choose from list, both of which seem to work ok.

And finally drag and drop. I'm not actually sure, I'll have to do more real work with Shortcuts to know, I think, but you're right, there doesn't seem to be a reliable place to double tap and hold that doesn't trigger something else. Shame they don't just implement the built in VO drag/drop support where you just use the rotor. It would solve a lot of problems.