Shortcut Automations are a lot less Irritating to use in iOS 15.4

In Apple's Latest Beta, you can Finally turn off Automation Notifications.

According to Fjorden developer Florian Bürger on Twitter, Apple's upcoming iOS 15.4 Software Update has discreetly incorporated a huge quality of life feature for its Shortcuts app: the ability to mute the highly unpleasant notifications for personal automations that users have set up on their devices.

The automations feature is one of Apple's most helpful and effective tools, even for individuals who don't utilize Shortcuts on a regular basis.

It lets users set up basic "if / then" triggers for a variety of conditions on an iPhone, such as a specific time of day, arriving at a location, receiving an email or text from a specific contact, joining a Wi-Fi network, tapping an NFC tag, opening an app, or when your phone reaches a certain battery life level.

When used correctly, Shortcuts can do things like turn off notifications when your Kindle app is open so you can read in peace, turn on low power mode when your phone's battery drops below 50%, and turn off rotation lock when you open the Apple TV app so your shows properly enter full-screen mode.

However, until iOS 15.4, Apple had made the feature almost worthless for everyday work by requiring required notifications every time the parameters were met. The latest update corrects this by providing a toggle that allows users to mute those notifications, making Apple's Shortcut automations far more useful for day-to-day chores by removing the annoying messages that used to appear every time you activated one.

To turn off the notifications, go to the automation and turn off the new "notify when run" toggle that appears if you're using iOS 15.4 beta. You'll have to repeat this process for each notification, but once you've done so, the Shortcuts notification bar for your automations will no longer disturb you.

However, there are a few caveats: the new setting only applies to Shortcuts automations, not all Shortcuts. That implies that if you're using Shortcuts as a workaround for custom iOS icons, you won't be able to get rid of the pop-up banner when you use that technique to open an app, for example.

In addition, iOS 15.4 provides the ability to utilize Face ID while wearing a mask on newer iPhones, as well as a flood of new emoji. The upgrade is still in public beta, but it should be released to the general public in the next weeks, ideally with these exciting new features intact.