Apple Shortcuts on Mac: Integromat webhooks, Slapdash, and Session

hey guys it's nathan um i just wanted to share like a new update that's actually come from apple on the like operating system um and just share like a few productivity applications and hacks that i've been like using recently not hacked so much but more like automation just generally work ways of working more more productively that i found found work for me um so apple have released their new operating system which is called Monterey and it's really quite good now you're able to use shortcuts and if you're not aware of what shortcuts is it's apple's built-in automation so you can actually run like automations from

your iphone i suggest like you look into it is somewhat basic in terms of like the pre-built um automations but to be honest i do use it every single day for various different things and the way that i actually use it most is on the Apple Watch you can send api requests so whenever i have an idea for something i need to do i have a note i can use Siri to dictate whatever i talk to to the Apple Watch and it will just be added in on Notion and this is like just such a great way with um i don't know the system is

only as good as the information you feed it right and to be able to easily have the most simple way of feeding information like no matter where i am no matter when an idea pops into my head um it just really improves like the um Notion system that i built so i have this on my phone i have it on my watch and now i i even have it here as well so essentially what we're talking about is um sending api requests so what i really like is that now you can just click a button and send an api request to Integromat so maybe there's

like information that you want quite frequently how many visitors are on your website or like is some analytics um how many LinkedIn messages have you set today without you needing to open up Airtable and check this information you can just send an api request and so we'll just build something like really really quickly [Music] test API request and we're going to do get content get contents of url but this also works on get contents of a web page so let's and i for some reason people are always scared off by webhooks and i'm really not sure why um essentially it's just this is a url

that you now own that you can ping over any data that you want to so now if i nathan let's run that now if i ping this from my laptop that data has now been synced over to Integromat and so that could be used for example just to trigger i don't know what whatever you want to trigger um pull some information from Stripe for example how much revenue you made today like any like number of things and then if you want to send back the data you're in the body so just as like a super simple example we can just send back but you can

adjust that to send back any information that you want um which i think is i don't know it's really really good now on top of that of course like maybe you don't also want to send over like the name like your name the whole time you want to send something like dynamically so you can put information from in fact i've not even used this on here um but on your phone like you can send over any information like how many steps you've taken and so on suggestions get address i think that they'll also allow you to ask for input so we can put like um

what do you want to ask maybe you just want to make a new record in Airtable or something you can put this will then be again perhaps it needs to be added in after anyway there will be a way i've just embarrassed myself because i can't find it but there will be a way to anyway okay it doesn't want to work for us now but we will um i'll find out how you do it pin anyway so what you can also do is you can pin in menu bar you can pin it on your touch bar um so that you can run it from wherever

you want and you can also add like a keyboard shortcut um that will trigger this to run now so that's like just like the first i don't know it's just something i think is really interesting as you can see like i've only actually just started playing around with this today but i i really like it so far and i've built a few like automations that i will i'm happy to share now on to like some other apps i've been playing around with i'm just gonna basically give like a really solid review for this tool as far as i know i was one of their first

users and this is uh if anyone's used Alfred is it's not quite as powerful as Alfred because it's early stages but i love like the interface of it and everything that they they do so it's almost like an operating system for your cloud applications um so by cloud applications i pretty much mean like your your sas tools that you work with um so you can connect any number of tools Figma Zoom Google Drive GitLab Dropbox Gmail anything like this Notion LinkedIn Intercom Stripe and it allows you to search for example i can search my inbox for and it will just trigger like the shortcut to

go in and search for it it also tracks all of my most recently viewed Notion pages i can do send Slack message um i can do send Superhuman email it just adds in a ton of shortcuts it's got 90 days of my like clipboard history by clipboard i mean like my copy and paste history so i'm sure most people have had that issue where they've copied something and then lost it and it's caused a lot of issues um that's now sold i can just solve sorry i can run a command to show it's it's just really good i highly suggest you look at it i

think i pay about twenty dollars per month for it and it's really really active and i just stumbled across this app by by accident i've been using it for about for about eight months now i think um and it's just one of those things that is just integrated so deeply in my like day-to-day um usage that i just completely like overlook it and completely forget like the importance of it but it's just one of those things where if i lost it i would i would really be quite upset and just by hitting command j from anywhere from any application i'm in i can just run

a shortcut you can it works just like finder i can open chrome um i can attach a shortcut to it for any page that i want and so that is like it is one of my favorite applications um but now to add on top of that they've also added in shortcuts i think this would have actually been even better but unfortunately for them apple have just released their like shortcuts as well which does the same thing but i absolutely love um Slapdash nonetheless and yeah look you can also make you can make your own text snippets here like um shortcuts maybe in like for programming

if you want some to save some functions like whatever it may be for LinkedIn messages if you're frequently sending out the same thing you can just add them in here um it's absolutely an app that you can't live without maybe it takes a couple of days for you to build the habit of using it um but i just find i'm getting like deeper and deeper into their um into their workspace anyway the other point i was going to make is they've now released what are called like commands so for anyone who's um comfortable writing scripts who is developer you can attach a script onto onto

any command so like whatever you want to do just like run script and it will run i personally haven't set up any scripts as of yet because there's nothing i run that um frequently locally but nonetheless i completely see the value in it what i have done is set up a um a call something similar to what we just did with shortcuts actually um which will trigger an api called Notion um and i can add in uh make more youtube videos and i can choose whether this is a task and no a project idea a reward or a resource these are like the five key

databases that keep my Notion system ticking over um and i'll make a video on all of those as well because the Notion system is just it's absolutely unbelievable it's another thing that i i couldn't couldn't live without since i've just built on top of it so much and my life pretty much pretty much revolves around what Notion tells me to do um so yeah and if i run that then it will be added in Notion hopefully i can show this there's nothing too sensitive yeah make more youtube videos that's now just been been added in so yeah this is something i highly just absolutely recommend

that everyone checks out you can attach links if you're frequently looking at Integromat urls whatever it is you're doing like this is just if you're using cloud-based apps this is like a must-have and it's it's very active like they're continuing just to add in more features um i'm not affiliated with them at all but this is a hundred percent in fact if anyone from Slapdash watches this reach out to me i would be happy to do some um marketing with you i think it's a fantastic tool and then on to the next one so Slapdash is just like an incredible productivity app but something else

i'm going to introduce you to that i really love is um this is called session and it's a like pomodoro timeless you set the amount of time you want to work for you work in sessions hence the name session and you basically once i start it it will start a um a countdown timer you can sync it with like your calendar and all sorts of things they haven't built an api yet but i really wish they would if i could sync my Notion tasks over here automatically it would be it would be amazing but the other thing that they have again going back to apple

shortcuts is whenever you start a session you can link it with apple shortcuts and whenever you end the session you can link it with apple shortcuts and you can also link it with scripts you see i'm script uh what was the name of my automation uh there's gonna be somewhere uh open up folder here we go so this is a script that will actually run when whenever you start the session or whether you end the session and you can write these out yourself which i think is really cool so what i've set mine to do is i tell Slack to quit so i don't have

any incoming messages and that will last for like 25 minutes and i also open application Spotify and tell it to play and because apple shortcuts don't support Spotify like they only support apple music i also have an apple shortcuts that um which is another great thing is it stays always on top that's a new feature it's optional but i personally love it it means that i can stay completely focused so it will remain on top of any app even when i'm working on something else um so there was session start so i'll just show you the automation that i run bluetooth is turned on we

connect to AirPods Max and we turn on the lights to purple if you can see my background light is purple now at the moment um we set do not disturb on and then when session ends we also reset this and i put the light as red and i might actually change this light from purple to green so it's just actually like an indicator of i'm using my time efficiently if i'm doing this it means i'm working on a on a task so the light's green i know that i'm working productively if there's also anyone else in my apartment i can just tell them if the

light is green do not disturb me in fact maybe it should be red and then also we have like the session ends if you like it's attached to like a smart light and just just that makes sense so it will change the color based on if i'm working or not so if i end the session now um it will turn off and it will go quite dark here yeah and it will also open up Notion so that straight away i jump into like the next task because that's where i store my tasks but if you're linked on if you're doing Trello like whatever it is

you can tell it to open whatever application that you want um the session will automatically take like a five minute break as well at the end of your sessions maybe you want to go and get coffee or get tea or whatever it may be so yeah there's just another like productivity app that i really like you can also go more advanced into like the calendar i don't really want to show everything i've been working on but it's a really good application and it's included for free and something that i recommended before which was Setapp which is like nine ten dollars per month i think it's

absolutely no brainer no-brainer in my opinion and you get all of these apps included i think there's about 160 applications even just little things that clean my mac there's loads of tasks in in fact the question i'll get is what apps am i using so TextSniper is assigned to a shortcut command d i can extract the text from anything and so from an image it will extract any text CloudMounter this is linked to Dropbox and sftp server that i have so i can drag and drop files locally and they will automatically upload to Dropbox without me ever needing to open it CleanShot i use everyday

fantastic screenshot tool TablePlus database management CodeRunner i use every day as well um session this app we're just talking about switch also really nice app for connecting to things very quickly quit all i don't use that can be uninstalled that can be uninstalled Sizzy amazing for web development Noizio plays natural noises IconJar i use every day torrent downloading i can't even go for all of them you can see i'm using about 30 different apps from um for like a 10 a month subscription so the name is like Setapp i can put it in the description but again really really good investment and session is included

on on on that um i'll also link the session directly as well yeah other than that if like as i said this is like the sort of direction i want to push the channel in a little bit more like working very s smart like more like sort of life hacks so rather than just being limited to um it's very dark in here let me put the lights on um rather than just being to running like marketing automation which like i i love i still love making videos on marketing automation but oftentimes i don't want to particularly because it can just go out to like competitors

and so on and if i spent a load of time working out some new like hack i generally i'm very excited about it and i want to but put a video about it like to share it but also i don't um i don't want it to like get out there until i've like fully utilized it and and set it up so yeah this is like the direction i'm more interested to go into like i can share the things that i'm working on without having to share like this has no this is just like helping to improve how you're working right and it's not taking away

from my um from things that i'm working on whereas if i'm sharing particular growth hacks that i'm using for my companies and then competitors see them it sort of takes away the advantage that i bring to the table because i'm just sharing everything so i hope that makes them make sense and i know i said that i'd make a few videos on these like side projects that i've um that i've built and i i will do they're still in quite early stages so and there's also an idea for like another startup that i've i've had as which is something it's not black hat at all

and really i'm quite happy to document the whole process of me building the initial website getting the first customers setting up the team it will be like a people-based business as much as i said i'd never do that again yeah it's uh it's something quite interesting and it would be like an api forum for virtual assistants and in fact now that these things on shortcuts are available as well it's an even better idea so basically you'll be able to ping over whenever you have something that needs doing you can um it would be available on like Integromat so if you need like a human to

look over something if you need human input on anything on any small task you can ping it over via an Integromat app or using like an endpoint just like we've shown here like from shortcuts so you could say call Siri for example to send over a task it would be given yeah it would be given to to an application where there's hundreds of virtual assistants sitting behind it that will perform the task for you and then return you a response on Integromat once the task is completed um so it was just i don't know it's because i've got an actual use for it i have

so many tasks are just very repetitive and i think really most business owners do but i haven't got the time to manage a virtual assistant or at least i don't feel like i do um to train them on everything and handle the management the payroll like everything like that so i was actually just going to set up a company to handle all of like the management as well i have really good managers so i can just ping over repetitive tasks that need a human human input to to an endpoint and trust that they can get completed and so if it is something that you're interested

in let me know um i'm going to build it for myself regardless but i can like document the process of um of doing so and always interested to know if there's any um if my subscribers feel it would be useful for them too and so this is yeah it's more for the task that i mean some apis are even very expensive to use in fact so um it would be for tasks that require like a human input and you don't want to build like some machine learning algorithm to to do it or you you haven't got the time to build like an automation because it's

too complex maybe um so yeah let me know about that let me know your thoughts on these um productivity things any questions as always leave a comment i do respond to every single comment unless it's a silly question um yeah or unless i've missed it but um i especially on the recent videos i i get back to every single comment um yeah thank you very much for watching