Use of ChatGPT on iOS with Apple Shortcuts and Siri

seamlessly incorporating ChatGPT into your iOS workflows

Sam Parmar
2 min readJun 14, 2023
hey arnold gif saying it’s a shortcut
https://giphy.com/gifs/heyarnold-nicksplat-xUNd9JqLf5BrFw7eRa

The official ChatGPT iOS app from OpenAI recently released an exciting update, enabling integration with iOS Shortcuts and Siri. This combination offers a world of possibilities without relying on OpenAI’s API. One example that’s mentioned in the documentation from OpenAI is using it to summarize text from your clipboard into a format of interest like a Haiku via button press (of your Shortcut bookmark). Alternatively, you could ask it to trigger the iOS shortcut via Siri or verbally ask it the full prompt via Siri’s dictate functionality.

Creative possibilities

Here’s a simple example of what a ChatGPT + iOS Shortcut (see appendix for the screenshot). It asks the user to type the prompt in a popup. It then copies the answer to the clipboard and opens the ChatGPT app with the prompt plus answer in a new chat. Alternatively, you could dictate text and use that as the input to ask ChatGPT.

There are a lot of directions you can go with this. For example, you can setup automations in the iOS shortcuts app now with ChatGPT. One idea could be to trigger and reply using ChatGPT when a keyword is sent via text message by a friend or family member (you could even adjust the prompt so it sends in the style of Robert Dinero). Another idea is that you could schedule a shortcut to summarize content on a weekly basis from a pre-specified Apple Note. I’m sure there are a bunch of other ideas you can think of. If you want to learn more, check out the official ChatGPT iOS app, skim the user guide on iOS Shortcuts from Apple, and, most importantly, try it out on your own.

Appendix

Example Shortcut with text input prompt and response copy

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