Toolbox Pro for Shortcuts

I downloaded this app so that I could disable my morning alarm in case I was already awake and listening to music. I set up this flow (literal text input shown between caret quotes) Get clipboard -> Set variable <saved clipboard> to Clipboard; Is audio playing?; Wait to return; Get clipboard -> Set variable <is audio playing> to Clipboard -> Copy <saved clipboard> to clipboard -> If clipboard is <"true"> { Exit shortcut with Clipboard } otherwise { /* play my alarm */ }; I had to make sure to use the double quotes when testing the clipboard value, which was not clear from the instructions and nearly caused me to leave a one star review until I was able to guess the correct format. The "is audio playing?" action takes a very long time to return (nearly a minute!). It also wipes out whatever may have been on my clipboard previously, which forced me to jump through hoops to preserve the clipboard state as shown above. I suspect there is also a race condition in the event that I use the clipboard while the action is executing (which, again, is not a short amount of time). It would be much better to return a boolean or at least write to one of Toolbox Pros global variables. Three stars because it technically works and meets my needs, but very surprising and disappointing in the details. Finally, ZERO STARS to Apple for mangling the linefeeds and other whitespace in this review, making technical feedback extremely challenging.

This app has so many amazing functions, but my favorite is the Global Variable tool. If you’ve used shortcuts much at all, you’ve almost certainly had a moment when you wish that a shortcut could have some kind of memory. To know if it’s been run that day, or to remember a piece of information that changes. A score for a game, a simple tally, and countless other uses. Well that’s exactly what Global variable does. Beyond that, toolbox pro has lots of great functions that shortcuts can’t normally do, and even more functions that you could pull off in the shortcuts app, but that would be so cumbersome that they’re not worth it. But in Toolbox Pro, it’s right there, and works just the way it says. Seriously, if you like shortcuts at all, download this.

I love how creative this app is in providing useful functionality to the Shortcuts app. The actions it adds are really impressive and look like Apple implemented actions with how slick they are. I use Shortcuts on a daily basis and Toolbox Pro actions are in a lot of those actions. I’m also really impressed with how transparent the developer is on Twitter. They’re open to input and share upcoming features with their community. I give this app 5 stars because of how impressive it is plus how impressive the developer is. Looking forward to seeing where this app goes especially as Shortcuts evolves over time and (hopefully) allows devs to access even more functionality in iOS and iPadOS!! Thank you!!