iOS Shortcuts for designers
Automate your notes with iOS Shortcuts
Press, tap or ask Siri. The note is saved.
Grape adds eight actions to the Shortcuts app on iPhone and iPad. A note joins a project folder from an automation, the Action button or Siri without opening the app, and one press opens Grape on a recording, a scan or a blank page.
1Two actions in Shortcuts
2It runs at nine every night
3The answer joins your journal
Create Note, Add to Note and Save Web Page run in the background, without opening Grape
Open Note, Write New Note, Record Voice Note, Scan Document and Start Handwriting open the app on the job
Start them from an automation, a home screen icon, the Action button, Back Tap or Siri
Comes with Pro and Lifetime, on iPhone and iPad
A note without opening the app
Create Note takes text, a title, a folder and photos, PDFs or recordings, and saves them while you stay where you are.
Add to the note you keep
Add to Note puts text or files at the end or the top of a note you pick: a journal, a log, a shopping list.
Keep a page by its address
Save Web Page files the whole article, or just the title, a summary and the link, in the folder you name.
Straight to the job
Record Voice Note, Scan Document and Start Handwriting open Grape with the recorder, the scanner or the page already up.
It runs on its own
Tie any of them to a time of day, an alarm, a Focus, a place or an NFC tag, and it happens without a tap.
Waiting in Grape
What a shortcut saves is in your library the next time you open Grape, and with sync on, on your other devices too.
01 Outcomes
Three problems, resolved
Not a feature grid. What changes when the sketch and the reasoning live in the same file.
01
The sketch is in one app and the reasoning is in another.
Draw the idea inside the note
An infinite canvas sits in the editor, so a wireframe and the thinking behind it stay together.
02
Six months on, nobody can say why the pattern was chosen.
Explain a decision six months later
Ask why a pattern was chosen and get the note where you argued it out.
03
Research sessions end as a folder of recordings nobody plays back.
Run research without a second tool
Record the session, get the transcript, and pull the quotes into the summary.
04 In use
What that looks like for designers
Three points in a project where the tool changes the work.
Kickoff
Collect the constraints, screenshots and references into one note per problem.
Exploration
Sketch on the canvas, write the tradeoffs underneath and link to related notes.
Critique
Record the feedback session so you are listening instead of typing.
Examples
Nine Shortcuts to Start With
Each is a few actions in the Shortcuts app, and Show me how plays every step on an iPhone. The ones that save run in the background, and what they save is in Grape the next time you open it.
Every night at 9 PM
A line in your journal every night
At nine the phone asks how the day went, and the answer goes on the end of one long Journal note, a day at a time.
Ask for Text with How was today?
Add Provided Input to Journal
Action button
Record with one press
Point the Action button at Record Voice Note and one press opens Grape on a new note with the recorder already running.
Record Voice Note
Back Tap
Keep what you copied
Copy a line in any app, double tap the back of the phone, and it joins your Quotes note. Back Tap is in Settings, under Accessibility and Touch.
Get Clipboard
Add Clipboard to Quotes
Siri
Speak a note to Siri
Name the shortcut Quick note and say it to Siri. What you say next becomes a new note in Inbox, without touching the phone.
Dictate text
Create note with Dictated Text in Inbox
Weekdays at 8 AM
The day on your calendar, ready for notes
Every working morning a note in Meetings lists the events of the day, one to a line, so the notes for each have somewhere to go.
Find Calendar Events where Start Date is today
Create note with Calendar Events in Meetings
Every day at 7 AM
Morning reading from your feeds
The newest posts from a blog you follow are saved to Reading as links with a summary. Choose Article instead to keep the whole text.
Get 5 items from the feed address
Repeat with each item in Items from RSS Feed
Save Repeat Item as Link in Reading
Alarm is stopped
Morning pages when the alarm stops
Stop the alarm and Grape is open on a blank note in Morning pages, so the first thing you do with the phone is write.
Write a new note in Morning pages
Study Focus turns on
A handwriting page for study time
Turn on a Study Focus on the iPad and Grape opens on a fresh page of ruled paper, ready for the pencil.
Start Handwriting
NFC tag
A sticker on the paper tray
Touch the phone to an NFC sticker on the in tray and the scanner opens on a new note, so receipts and letters stop piling up.
Scan Document
The rest of the app
What Else Grape Does
Every part of the app is built around the same idea: keep what you write, and hand it back when you need it.
07 Questions
Questions Before You Install It
The rest of them live in the help center.
Keep both in the same note.
Drawing canvas, screenshots, research and the reasoning behind a decision in one place, so the rationale survives longer than the file name.