Night time routines, on the other hand, can be equally sophisticated and beneficial. They might involve dimming the lights, setting your phone to ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, playing calming sounds or music to aid sleep, and even setting alarms for the next day. The beauty of these shortcuts lies in their customisability; you can tailor them to fit your specific needs and preferences, making your daily transitions smoother and more efficient.

So I thought this would make a good subject to cover in a mini series of posts, delving into the various ways these routines can be crafted to enhance productivity and simplify daily life. Without further ado, here goes.

In this first of the series, we’ll start by creating a shortcut that offers a personalised greeting followed by a detailed weather report. This foundational shortcut will set the tone for your day, giving you the essential information you need right from the start. Over the next few posts, we’ll expand on this shortcut by adding features to retrieve calendar events and reminders for the upcoming day, ensuring you’re always prepared for what lies ahead.

So I thought this would make a good subject to cover in a mini series of posts, so without further a due here goes.

In this first of the series we’ll start by creating a shortcut that would offer some form of greeting followed by a detailed weather report, and over the next few posts we’ll expand the shortcut to get calendar event and reminders for the upcoming day.

So let’s get started.

The first thing we need to do is add the Get weather at Current Location action. 

• 1. Search for Get weather at Current Location and add to your shortcut.

If you were run this now it would give you back the current weather only, living in the UK this is pointless information since its probably raining :-) 

Let’s make this step a little more exciting! Now it’s time to start bringing in the weather information we want using the Get weather at Current Location action. This handy feature doesn’t just tell you what the weather is like at the moment you run it – it also provides useful details for the entire day. For example, you can see when the sun will rise and set, and discover other interesting weather facts to help you plan your day with confidence. It’s like having your very own weather guide at your fingertips!

• Add Get Details of Weather Conditions action to your shortcut.

• Select the Details and scroll down the list to add Feels Like.

If you run the shortcut now, you’ll notice that the information has changed. It now only shows the current ‘Feels Like’ temperature, instead of the full weather details we got from ‘Get weather at Current Location’. This is because is the last action in the shortcut, don't worry we'll start to bring all this information together later.

Let’s duplicate the ‘Get Details of Weather Conditions’ and change the detail to Sunrise Time. Running the shortcut now will only show the Sunrise Time. Then, you can add more weather information to your shortcut using the duplicate method.

In my example I’m gathering the following information:

• Feels Like

• Sunrise Time

• Sunset Time

• High (Todays high)

• Low (Todays Low)

• Precipitation Chance

Now that we have all the weather data, let’s put it all together! We’ll add a Text action to do this, which will also be the first part of our morning greeting.

Once you’ve added the Text action to your shortcut, we can start adding our information.

I’ve started my text action with a morning greeting and then added the weather information. You’ll see that when you start adding text to the text action, a popup will appear asking you to select a variable.

This is a new feature in iOS 26. If you haven’t upgraded yet (why not?), you’ll need to press and hold where you want to add the variable. So, after adding your text, just select ‘Select Variable’ and then choose the variable you want to add to that part of the text.

Once you’ve added all the variables to the Text action, go ahead and run the shortcut. You should have something similar to this:

Looking good, isn’t it?

Well, not quite! If you’re anything like me and have added the Sunrise and Sunset times variable, you’ll have noticed that it displays the date and time together. Honestly, all I really wanted was just the time. If you’re the same, here’s how to fix it.

Simply select the Sunset variable in the Text action. Then, look towards the bottom of the panel it should be set to the default of date, change this to Time as the format. Repeat this same step for the Sunrise variable. 

Now, when you run the shortcut, you’ll see that both Sunrise and Sunset are shown as just the time – much cleaner!

As a little extra touch, let’s also make our shortcut speak the weather information aloud. It feels friendlier and more like a personal assistant.

To do this, just add the Speak action to your shortcut, placing it directly below the Text action. That’s it! You’ve now created a simple Shortcut that greets you in the morning and reads out today’s weather details.

At the moment, this shortcut runs manually, but you can easily take it a step further. Consider scheduling it to run at a set time every morning or even trigger automatically when you turn off your morning alarm. It’s a lovely way to start your day.

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts in this series. If there’s anything you’d like me to cover next time, please feel free to reach out – I’d be more than happy to include your suggestions, just head over to the About page and at the bottom just send me an email.

Until next time, take care and enjoy your shortcuts!