Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.
Shortcuts for iOS is a useful app for automating actions on your iPhone or iPad. In this series, weâve been looking at a variety of workflows to make your Apple device a lot more powerful to accomplish specific tasks.
Today, weâll take a look at another simple automation to combine multiple PDF documents or image files into a single PDF document. While there are lots of websites and apps that offer this functionality, Shortcuts makes it dead simple and doesnât require you to upload files. Hereâs how you do it:
Step #1: Download the Shortcuts app from the App Store, if you havenât done so already. (Note: It comes pre-installed on your device if youâre already running iOS 13 developer or public beta.)
Step #2: Open the app, and in the âMy Shortcutsâ tab, hit â+â on top to create a new shortcut.
Step #3: Tap the âSettingsâ icon on top right, and give the shortcut a name, like âMerge PDF.â You can also tap the âIconâ to change it to something that matches your shortcutâs function better.
Step #4: The first step to fetch the PDF files or images that you would want to merge. To do this, add the âGet Fileâ action. You can choose between different cloud services like iCloud Drive and Dropbox.
Also, ensure that you enable the option âSelect Multiple.â This allows you to select multiple files when you run the shortcut.
Step #5: Next, add the action âMake PDFâ to make a combined PDF from the documents selected in the previous step. You can also turn the setting âInclude Marginâ on, or select specific pages using the âIncludeâ option.
Step #6: A convenient method to view the merged PDF is to add a âQuick Lookâ action. This allows you to preview the the combined document and share it.
Step #7: And, youâre done! When you run the shortcut, youâll be prompted to select the files. And once done, a combined PDF will be generated.
Weâve already covered how to create a simple RSS feed reader, share your Wi-Fi password as a QR code, and get the size of any file on your iOS device. But, this is just the start of what you can accomplish with Shortcuts.
If youâre new to the whole Shortcuts thing, Apple has put together a handy user guide to get you started. Have any interesting idea for a shortcut? Tweet at us.
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