Create simple RSS feed using iPhone Shortcuts and auto install on Mac menu bar
Recently Apple added Shortcuts to macOS Monterey so it is now possible to create a Shortcut on your iPhone and with the click of a few buttons have it auto installed in your Mac menu bar, and all in a few simple button clicks.
For this post I’ll be using an iPhone with iOS15 and macOS Monterey with version 12.0.1, both devices are logged in with the same Apple account.
Creating the iPhone RSS viewer
On your iPhone open the Shortcut app. In the first view selected “All Shortcuts”, you will then be presented with the second view, select “+” to create the new Shortcut. When presented with the new Shortcut give it a name to match the RSS feed you want to use, in this example I’ll name the Shortcut “Apple RSS feed”.
In view 3 (see below), select the search bar and enter “rss”. You will be presented with all the actions you can perform with RSS feeds.
Our simple shortcut will present 10 items in an RSS feed for the user to select from. To perform that task select “Get Items from RSS Feed”.
You will then be presented with view 4. By default the rss url is added for you, but you can edit that url to be any rss feed you are interested in.
Apple tries to also help out by suggesting the next action, and as we want to present the RSS items in a list, select “Choose from List”.
Next search for the “Get URLs from” action, followed by the “Open URLs” action and add them to our Shortcut.
That's it, you now have a simple RSS viewer Shortcut, see image below. The Shortcut will present 10 items, if the user selects an item the system will then open a Safari web page to the selected item.
Adding Shortcut to Mac menu bar
This Shortcut will be super handy on the iPhone, but it would be great if we could also add it to our Mac menu bar. We can do that with two simple clicks straight from our iPhone.
In view 5 (see below), select the “Details” button, which will present view 6. From there simply select “Pin to Menu Bar”.
That’s it, mission complete.
Open your Mac, in the top right of the menu bar select the Shortcuts icon and you should see the Shortcut ready to be used.
Almost too easy.
If you want to learn more about Shortcuts you can find a list of helpful links here.
