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Best Everyday Shortcut: A New Automation April Shortcuts Contest Category

One of our top goals with Automation April is to encourage the participation of Shortcuts users of every level. That’s why the Automation April Shortcuts Contest judges won’t just be looking for the most complex shortcuts with the most actions. They’ll be looking at factors like originality, performance, design, user experience, and usefulness, which are all applicable to simple shortcuts too.

To drive home the message that the contest isn’t just for experts, we’ve added a new category: Best Everyday Shortcut. The category will be judged like the others, but with an emphasis on clever uses of actions to create a shortcut that does one thing particularly well, from which a broad cross-section of users can benefit.

Entries for all categories are being accepted through April 20, 2022 at shortcuts.macstories.net. Full details are available in our Automation April Shortcuts Contest announcement post from last week.

We’ve been incredibly pleased with the response to the contest so far. The MacStories audience has already submitted a lot of shortcuts, many of which are in the running for the new Best Everyday Shortcut category, but we’d love to see more. So, if you’ve got a shortcut that you rely on every day and think would benefit others, we’d love it if you would submit it for consideration.

And remember, we’ve got some terrific prizes for the top shortcuts in each category:

Best Overall Shortcut

  • A 3-year subscription (or membership upgrade and/or extension for existing Club members) to Club Premier
  • An Elgato Stream Deck XL
  • An Analogue Pocket
  • A special Discord contest winner role
  • Induction into the Automation April Hall of Fame

Best Everyday Shortcut, Best HomeKit Shortcut, Best Productivity Shortcut, Best Media Shortcut, and Best Mac-specific Shortcut

  • A 1-year subscription to Club Premier (or membership upgrade and/or extension for existing Club members)
  • A special Discord category winner role
  • Induction into the Automation April Category Hall of Fame

So, whether you have a simple shortcut that you rely on every day or one that’s more complex, visit shortcuts.macstories.net to enter the contest before the April 20, 2022 deadline.

You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.

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John is MacStories’ Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico.

John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.

@johnvoorhees
@johnvoorhees
@[email protected]
@johnvoorhees.bsky.social
[email protected]