Apple Shortcuts with AI: The Use Model Action Explained

Apple Shortcuts has long been one of the most capable automation tools on iPhone, iPad and Mac, but building useful shortcuts often meant wrestling with text formats and fiddly logic. With iOS 26 and macOS 26, Apple added AI directly into Shortcuts, and that changes what an ordinary user can automate.

What changed

Shortcuts now includes Apple Intelligence actions for working with text, such as proofreading, summarising and turning text into lists. The most flexible addition is the Use Model action, which lets a shortcut send text to an AI model with your own instructions and use the response in later steps.

The Use Model action

Use Model offers three choices of model:

• On-device: runs entirely on your device, works offline and keeps data local.
• Private Cloud Compute: Apple’s larger server-based model, designed so Apple does not retain your data.
• ChatGPT: through Apple’s ChatGPT integration, which can be used without a separate subscription or API key.

The key benefit is that the AI can handle messy, unstructured text. A shortcut can take an email, a message or a web page, ask the model to pull out exactly what it needs, and pass a clean result to the next action.

Practical examples

Add events from messages

Share a message or email to a shortcut that asks the model to extract the event name, date, time and location, then creates a calendar event from the result.

Summarise long emails

Turn a long email into three bullet points and copy them to the clipboard or a note.

A daily journal template

Create a new journal entry each morning with the date, the current weather, a prompt for the day and a consistent structure.

Clean up notes

Take rough meeting notes and turn them into a tidy summary with action items.

Getting started

1. Make sure your device supports Apple Intelligence and that it is switched on in Settings.
2. Open Shortcuts and create a new shortcut.
3. Add the input you want to work with, such as shared text or the clipboard.
4. Add the Use Model action, choose a model and write a clear instruction, for example: “Extract the event name, date, start time and location. Reply in the format: name | date | time | location.”
5. Add the actions that use the result, such as Add New Event or Create Note.
6. Test it with a few real examples and refine the instruction.

Privacy

For personal or sensitive content, the on-device model keeps data on your device. Private Cloud Compute is designed so that requests are not stored by Apple. Requests sent to ChatGPT are handled under Apple’s ChatGPT integration terms, so choose that option deliberately for anything sensitive.

Limitations

• It needs an Apple Intelligence-compatible device and current software.
• The on-device model is smaller and better suited to short, focused tasks.
• AI output can vary, so check results for anything important, such as dates and amounts.
• Complex shortcuts still need some patience to build and test.

Related reading

• What is MCP? How AI apps connect to tools and data
• OpenClaw: a beginner’s guide to a more powerful, and riskier, personal AI agent

The bottom line

AI in Shortcuts is not a headline feature, but it is one of the most practical. It lets everyday users automate tasks involving messy text that were previously too awkward to build, with a choice of private, on-device processing.