Now, look. Don’t panic. Don’t immediately reach for the “back” button or go scurrying off to find a video of a cat playing the piano. Stay with me, I am going to show you how to make a Shortcut.
I promise this is going to be simple and you are going to surprise yourself, and more importantly, you’re going to end up with a tool that is actually useful.
It’s called the Shortcuts app.
Are you still here? Excellent. You have more backbone than my last accountant had.
Shortcuts is a magnificent little piece of software that allows you to perform a vast, dizzying multitude of tasks all at once, triggered by nothing more than a single click of a button or a brief utterance of a phrase. It is, quite literally, the “Easy Button” for your digital life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you follow these basic, maga-proof steps, you will have a handy little application on your Mac that locks the screen and puts the whole machine to sleep instantly. It’s slick, it’s efficient, and it’ll give you a tiny, shimmering glimpse into the sheer power of what this app can do.
Right. Let’s get to the oily bits.
The Build
Open the Shortcuts App. It’s the icon that looks like two overlapping squares in a colour that can only be described as “marketing department pink.” You’ll likely find it in your Applications folder.
Look for the + icon in the top toolbar. Click it.
On the right-hand side, there’s a search bar. Type in “Lock Screen.”
You’ll see an action called—surprisingly—Lock Screen. Drag that into the main window on the left.
Again, on the right-hand side, there’s a search bar. Type in “Put the Display to sleep.”
At the top of the window, it’ll say New Shortcut, some other random thing. Click on that and rename it something punchy. “THE KILL SWITCH” usually works. I called mine Lock Screen…inventive, I know.
Now, add your masterpiece to the Dock
Now, having a shortcut is all well and good, but you don’t want to go hunting through menus every time you want to leave your desk. You want it right there, next to your “Emails I haven’t answered” folder.
Now, click on the File menu in the top left hand corner and choose Add to Dock
Like magic, a new icon will appear in your Dock.
Now, just click it and voila..or as the french would say…”there you go!”
I said earlier that this app could do some amazing things. I have a script. A piece of digital wizardry that lives inside my phone. And it means that I, a grown man, never have to remember a single thing ever again.
Imagine the scene: I’m wandering around the kitchen, perhaps looking for a snack or wondering why the fridge is making that haunting whistling noise, and I notice we’ve run out of eggs. In the olden days—last Tuesday—I’d have to find a bit of paper and a stubby pencil and write “EGGS” like a Victorian schoolboy.
But not anymore.
Now, I simply address the empty air. I say, “Yeah Siri, add eggs to the shopping list,” and—presto—the script leaps into action. It doesn’t complain, it doesn’t ask why I need more eggs, it just does it. It creates a reminder in my “Shopping List” Remonders, tucked away in the digital bowels of my phone. I could also just say the same thing to my iPhone or iPad but wondering around the house doing seems more…Star Trek to me.
And here is the genius part: as the week goes on, and I continue my aimless wandering, the list grows. Milk. Bread. A fresh supply of Dilithium Crystals. It all just… appears. By Saturday, the weekly shopping list has been assembled by a ghost in the machine while I was busy thinking about where I had left my glasses or the whereabouts of the TV remote.
It is seamless. It is effortless. And it means I can spend more time doing important things, like sitting down.
