But once you’ve started figuring it out, there’s a real sense of achievement you get when you’ve successfully turned a three or six or 15-step process into a couple of clicks (it's a bit like the little, tiny version of the feeling you get when you beat a particularly difficult puzzle game). Shortcuts can be difficult to get into for a first-timer, even with the relatively robust library of sample shortcuts and online shortcut resources like MacStories. When you’re done, you have a chain of actions that can make complex or repetitive tasks simple-put something in one end, and a predictable result comes out the other. You build shortcuts by arranging these different building blocks in a specific order, designating sources and destinations for different data and files. Apps (or macOS itself) can offer specific capabilities, like sending a message in Messages, adding a calendar event, or converting a file from one format to another. If you’ve worked in Automator at all, the process of building shortcuts in Shortcuts will look familiar. And now that app is being billed as the future of automation on the Mac, fully replacing the Automator app that inspired it. Workflow was bought by Apple in 2017 and was integrated into iOS 12 as an optional app called Shortcuts. The original Shortcuts began life as an iOS app called Workflow, which was a decidedly Automator-inspired way to automate tasks on iPhones and iPads. There’s a snake-eating-its-tail vibe to Shortcuts for Mac. (This, predictably, is called shortcuts.) They can be accessed in the Shortcuts app itself, via a menu bar icon, using the Quick Actions menu in the Finder, or using a new Shortcuts command line tool. Shortcuts can map out complex actions step by step and make them as simple as pressing a button, saving you time in the long run. If Monterey has a single feature that’s big enough to qualify as a headliner, it’s support for the Shortcuts app.

Best mac automator workflows