How to disable Shortcuts Automation notifications

Avid users of Apple’s Shortcuts App know the problem: Automations always trigger annoying notifications that pile up in your notification center.

A good example is one sec: the app triggers a breathing exercise whenever you open social media apps to force you to reflect on your habits. But also a ton of annoying notifications.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to fix this.

The new “Notify When Run” Toggle

In iOS 15.4, Apple will introduce a new toggle in the Shortcuts App, that lets you disable Shortcut Automation notifications for good: Simply open the automation and disable the toggle below “Notify When Run“. Afterwards you wont get any more such notifications!

Please note: iOS 15.4 has not yet been released officially (estimate is end of March 2022), so there’s another trick to disable notifcations temporarily:

The trick to disable notifications before iOS 15.4

1. Open the iOS Settings app and go to “Screentime”.

2. Tap on “See All Activity”.

3. Scroll down to “Notifications” and tap on the little arrow to jump to the previous week. This will enable the list items to be tappable.

4. You might have to jump a bit bewteen the weeks until you find a Shortcuts list item that’s tappable. But it’s worth it because we’re almost there.

5. Now you have full control: disable Shortcut Automation notifications.

Since this is a little trick you might need to repeat these steps every now and then. I noticed that my notification settings would reset circa every 7 days. Still, very much worth it, because those notifications were just too annoying with one sec: one sec is already super annoying (and that’s by design to keep me away from social media and other distractions).

Goodbye Shortcuts notifications. Definitely won’t miss you!