Our mates over at MacStories have formally kicked off their second annual Automation April occasion. This occasion is targeted on serving to you employ automation to make your gadgets your individual, within the “spirit of tinkering, customization, and constructing one thing higher.”
Automation April is a month-long occasion that MacStories started internet hosting final 12 months. All through the month of April, the MacStories group, together with Federico Viticci and John Voorhees, will provide a set of content material centered on Shortcuts, automation, and far more.
Nice automation is about greater than effectivity. It’s additionally about making your gadgets your individual, so that they fit your wants higher than off-the-shelf apps can by themselves. The spirit of tinkering, customization, and constructing one thing higher is what Automation April is all about, which is why we’re happy to be spending April showcasing automation on Apple platforms alongside builders and MacStories readers once more this 12 months.
This consists of the Automation April Shortcuts Contest, which is a “option to showcase the most effective shortcuts from the automation neighborhood.” Submissions are open and free to everybody, and there are 4 totally different classes this 12 months:
- Finest productiveness shortcut
- Finest media shortcut
- Finest HealthKit shortcut
- Finest Mac-specific shortcut
Shortcuts are judged by a panel of specialists together with:
MacStories encourages everybody to construct a shortcut and submit it to the competition, whether or not your a Shortcuts professional or simply beginning out.
Shortcuts don’t have to be complicated to win in certainly one of contest’s classes. That’s true for all of the classes, however very true for the Finest On a regular basis Shortcut class, which we created as a result of we all know from expertise that a few of our most useful and frequently-used shortcuts are among the many easiest.
Our panel of judges might be evaluating submissions based mostly on originality, efficiency, design, consumer expertise, and usefulness. Pushing the boundaries of what’s potential with Shortcuts is definitely an element that might be thought-about in originality, however, on the similar time, usefulness doesn’t require complexity, which is one thing we’ve emphasised typically in our writing about Shortcuts. So, irrespective of your stage of expertise, we’d like to see what you construct.
Lastly, I need to level you to this publish from MacStories, which explains that this 12 months’s Automation April occasion is devoted to developer Alex Hay. Alex handed away final month after a battle with most cancers on the age of 36. He developed plenty of totally different apps and sources for the automation neighborhood, and MacStories is dedicating this 12 months’s Automation April in reminiscence of Alex.
So, along with his household’s blessing, we’re dedicating Automation April 2023 in reminiscence of Alex Hay, a superb and beloved member of the automation neighborhood who was taken from us far too early on the age of 36. MacStories can be making donations to the American Most cancers Society and Most cancers Analysis UK in Alex’s title, and we’d adore it in the event you would be part of us in making a donation utilizing the hyperlinks above too.
You may study extra about Automation April on the MacStories web site, alongside further particulars on the Shortcuts Contest. Additionally make sure you try the AppStories podcast, Membership MacStories, and the Shortcuts Archive that gives 300 totally different shortcuts which you can obtain and use in your Apple gadgets.
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