The iOS 27 Shortcuts app adds 21 new actions, and two things automators have asked for for yearsThe iOS 27 Shortcuts app adds 21 new actions, and two things automators have asked for for years

Apple's Shortcuts app in iOS 27 has gained 21 new actions, 14 reworked ones and three new automation triggers, according to a breakdown published by 9to5Mac on 29 September 2026.

The new actions cluster in four apps. Messages gains six, covering things the app could previously only do by hand: sending a Tapback, marking as read, deleting messages and whole conversations, opening the inbox and running a search. Photos gains six more, including favouriting, hiding, auto-enhancing and opening a specific photo, plus finding and deleting albums. Reminders gains list and group management along with sections. A smaller set covers VPN lookups, a general action for getting selected text, and a group of actions for storing content inside Shortcuts itself.

Which apps gained new actions?

The 14 improved actions are harder to count and more consequential than the new ones. They add Apple Intelligence model support, richer logic operators, Markdown handling, group chat messaging, structured analysis of what is on screen, extraction of tables and lists, QR and barcode handling from files, volume control and Ethernet support. The three new automation triggers fire on a notification, on a keyboard being connected and on a screenshot being taken.

MacRumors, covering the same release a week earlier, frames two of these as long-standing requests from the automation community rather than as incremental additions: the ability to store content in Shortcuts with optional global variables, and more flexible conditional blocks. Its list of Reminders actions differs slightly from 9to5Mac's, naming Create List and Delete Lists where 9to5Mac names Edit List, so the exact set is worth checking in the app rather than taking from either count.

Neither account says which of the improved actions require an Apple Intelligence device, and Apple has not published a per-action requirement list.

What it means

Count the actions and this looks like a maintenance release. Read what was added and it is not. The two items MacRumors singles out, stored content and better conditionals, are the difference between Shortcuts as a macro recorder and Shortcuts as something you can write a small program in. Until now a shortcut had no memory between runs: anything you wanted to keep had to be parked in a note, a reminder or a file, which meant every stateful automation was really an automation plus a storage hack. Global variables remove that, and they remove it for everybody rather than for people willing to install a helper app.

The conditional work matters for the same reason. The complaint about Shortcuts has never been that it lacked actions, it is that expressing anything beyond a straight line required nesting If blocks until the canvas became unreadable. Richer operators are the sort of change nobody writes a headline about and everybody notices on the third automation they build.

APPDOOK would flag the Photos additions as the quiet privacy item in this list. Hide Photos as a scriptable action means an automation can move an image out of the main library without a person present, and Favorite and Auto Enhance can now run over a batch unattended. Those are useful and they are also the first time these particular operations can happen without a deliberate tap, which is worth knowing before you grant a shortcut access to a photo library and forget about it.

The automation triggers are the most underrated part. Firing on a notification turns Shortcuts from something you run into something that reacts, and a keyboard connection trigger is a genuinely good proxy for entering a working context in a way no calendar rule manages. What none of the coverage establishes is whether the notification trigger can read the notification's contents or only its arrival, and that single fact decides whether it is a useful signal or a powerful one. We would not assume the stronger reading until Apple documents it.