Apple just killed off the most frustrating part of using iPhone Shortcuts

WWDC kicked off in style in 2026, with the departing Tim Cook here to see off his time as Apple CEO in a big way. At the core of this year's conference was the long-awaited Siri update, and while Apple has even faced lawsuits about the proposed overhaul of its AI assistant, the tech giant is here to prove it was worth the wait.

Siri will now be embedded in our Dynamic Islands and be a more conversational assistant akin to xAI's Grok. We're supposed to ask Siri more, but with that, it's also promising to deliver more.

Elsewhere, the handy Shortcuts app will make the most of AI, with Apple Intelligence able to create shortcuts based on natural language descriptions.

Shortcuts previously required us to manually build workflows, meaning it was largely relegated to being used by those who are a little more tech-savvy.

That's all changing as Apple Intelligence can be instructed to do it with you, arguably taking a lot of faff out of what is supposed to be a shortcut. After all, the clue is in the name.

The overhauled Shortcuts app got a round of applause online, with one person cheering: "Describe a shortcut is a glimpse into the future of no-app services imho where people will be able to simply ask for something their device assistant and it would be sorted, booking a cab, restaurant reservations, buy and pay for purchases and organise deliveries, etc…"

Another added: "Ngl! should simplify the process a lot and make it easier for people to get into. They’re really powerful as-is, just hard to get started with imo."

A third said: "This is the most underrated Apple Intelligence update: You can create shortcuts by just describing them."