Automate Your Daily Workflow with macOS Shortcuts

By: Laura Anthony, Deployment Success Engineer

As IT administrators many of us follow the same routine each morning: opening administrative dashboards, student information systems, communication platforms, and device management consoles. What if you could transform this daily 5-10 minute manual process into a keystroke? With macOS Shortcuts, you can create powerful morning automations that launch your entire environment instantly, helping you transition from arrival to student support faster than ever.

What is macOS Shortcuts?

MacOS Shortcuts is Apple's built-in automation app that lets you create custom workflows using a visual, drag-and-drop interface. You can chain together actions that interact with apps, websites, system functions, and services to automate repetitive tasks. Best of all, it's completely free and comes pre-installed on every Mac running macOS Monterey or later.

Why it matters:

The first few minutes of your day set the tone for everything that follows. Instead of manually opening your MDM console, IDP Admin dashboard, Student Information System all while juggling the morning support requests, you can have your entire technology toolkit ready instantly. This automation eliminates decision fatigue, reduces the chance of missing critical systems during busy mornings, and helps you dive straight into supporting teachers and students.

Here's how to build your morning routine:

• Open the Shortcuts app and click the "+" to create a new shortcut
• Name your shortcut something memorable, like "Morning Setup" or "Open Daily Tabs"
• Add "Open URLs" actions for each website you need - each action will open as a new tab in Safari:
• Your student information system dashboard
• IDP Admin Console and MDM
• Help Desk Portal
• Add “Open App” action if needed
• Slack 
• Miro
• Calendar 
• Add a brief "Wait" action (5 seconds) between each URL to prevent overwhelming Safari
• Pro Tip: List your most important/frequently-used sites first so they load in the leftmost tabs
• Set up your preferred trigger method:
• Assign a keyboard shortcut (⌘⌥G, for example)
• Enable "Use with Menu Bar" for quick access or schedule your Shortcut!

Pro Tip: If you prefer Chrome, add an "Open App" action for Google Chrome first, then add your URLs which ensures all sites open in Chrome instead of Safari. List your most important sites first so they appear in the left tabs.

With this automation, what used to be a scattered morning routine becomes a seamless transition into student and teacher support. You'll start each school day with confidence, knowing your entire technology management toolkit is ready.