Learn to use Apple Shortcut

A lot of us are now sitting at home and doing our works. There are many of us who use iPhones or iPads for our work. Sometimes there are a set of works which we have to do over and over again. Actually there is an easy way most of those works can be automated by Apple's Shortcut app. Hi, my name is Shad Ahmed Raiyan and I welcome you all to my first ever blog.

I'm not going to my details. If you want to get to know about me, you can find the links in the last of this page. Just to give you an idea about how much I know about Shortcut is that I have used Workflow (the previous version of Shortcut) before. I made quite a few for my personal use. Now I wanted to use my free time to help you understand the use of Apple Shortcut. I will make it easy for you and make you understand how actions in the Shortcuts work. I hope you will learn something new from the upcoming posts.

PDF To Images Converter

I often needed to convert PDF to Images and use it in different works. I know, you can easily depend on online PDF converters like EasePDF, Online Convert etc. to name a few. But many of you iOS users can use the advantage of Apple Shortcuts to do this task without the need of internet. So, today I am going to show you how you can make this Shortcut from your own and undertand how it works. Let us get to work…

Please note that iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 have built in Shortcuts app. In case you deleted it, down't worry, you can download it by pressing here. One more thing to know, I will be demonstrating all the shortcuts in my iPad Mini (I don't have any iPhone). The process is same.

Making the Shortcut

• First of all, open the Shortcuts app, click the top right (+) icon or the "Create Shortcut" button you see in your screen. Rename it by pressing the (…) button beside the "New Shortcut" text.
  

• Second Task will be to to make the shortcut accept PDF files from the Files app. So, we need to enable the share sheet option (as shown below) to accept files from other apps (not just Files App).

• The next task is to add an "If" condition so that people who didn't use the share sheet option can select file. We will set the condition as "If Shortcut Input des not contain any file then ask the user to select file". The otherwise option will be removed as we don't have a second condition. Using the "Get file" action the user will be able to select the file. Make sure the 'Show Document Picker' option is on.

• Now, we will search for "Get Images From Input" action to extract the images from the PDF file.

• After that, we have to save the file. Let us save it in our Photo Album. Search for the "Save to Photo Album" action and place it at the end.
  

Congrats! You have created a Shortcut. Use it when you need. Try to explore yourself in the Shortcuts app and hopefully you can learn to use different actions by yourself. You can download my version of "PDF to Image Converter" from here: Shortcut: PDF to Image Converter

That's all for this lesson. In the next lesson, we will be making a Shortcut that will alert you when you connect to a Bluetooth device. Stay home and Stay safe…

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