Automate Your Morning: Daily Check-in iOS Shortcuts

If your iPhone doubles as your alarm clock, consider this your sign to make your mornings a little softer and more intentional with a custom Daily Check-in Shortcut.

This shortcut runs automatically as soon as you stop my alarm. Instead of a jarring wake-up, you will be gently greeted with today’s weather, date, reminders, and a motivational message, all beautifully displayed on a background of your choice, paired with a soft Spotify playlist. Focus Mode switches on as well, helping you ease into the day with clarity and intention.

Essentially, it’s a personalised morning check-in that sets the tone just right. (And if you remember the old version with Siri reading everything out loud… you’ll understand what a major upgrade this is.)

What the Shortcut Does

Here’s what my current 2025 version looks like:

🤍 Turns on the flashlight for a soft wake-up light
🤍 Delivers a written daily briefing on a backdrop of your choice
🤍 Starts playing my favorite morning playlist on Spotify
🤍 Disables Sleep Focus and activates Focus Mode for productivity

Download here➡️ https://notionwithro.gumroad.com/l/zwgeif

How to Set It Up

• Download the Shortcut: Download the Shortcut from our Gumroad page and add it to your iOS Shortcuts library.

• Personalise your name: Open the Shortcut. In the text box (just beneath the comment box that say “type your name below”), enter your name.

• Set your backdrop: Open the Photos app and create a new album called “morning briefing” Add a background image to this album — ideally in a 4:5 ratio for the best fit. Then, go back to the Shortcut, find the “Find Photos” action, and set it to pull from your “morning briefing” album.

• Connect Reminders (optional): In the Shortcut, you’ll find a text box asking whether you use ReminderSync to manage tasks synced from Notion or Apple Reminders. Type “yes” if you do Type “no” if not. If you typed “yes,” scroll to the next action beneath it and select the Reminders list you want the shortcut to pull from. This allows it to display how many tasks you have today.

• Customise the overlay text (optional): Feel free to adjust the formatting, size, or style of the text that appears on the background image. Make it yours!

• Set your Spotify playlist: At the bottom of the Shortcut, you’ll see it’s currently set to play the Mood Booster playlist. Since Shortcuts doesn’t support direct Spotify integration by default, here’s a trick: ask Siri to play your desired playlist on Spotify a few times — it’ll then show up as a suggested action you can add or swap in.
• Adjust Focus Mode (optional): The final action enables a Focus Mode. You can change it to one of your own Focus modes or delete the action entirely if you don’t use Focus settings.

• Set up an automation: Last but not least, create an automation that runs the shortcut as soon as your alarm goes off — so everything kicks in automatically when you wake up.

Conclusion

Hopefully this adds a little magic to your mornings or at least makes waking up slightly less painful! Give it a try, make it your own and let me know how it transforms your mornings!