If I’ve learned anything about automation, it’s that projects are never really finished. After I wrote about my solution to taking notes during a podcast recording, Dan followed up with his version of the solution, built using Shortcuts.

Shortcuts for the shortcut But it keeps going. Several readers wrote in to point out that Dan’s approach could be simplified. Andrew Kerr suggested a single equation that converts the time into a number where 2:03:31 is represented as 2.0331 and then converted into proper formatting via a regular expression. Antonio Bueno suggested adding the seconds to the beginning of Unix time and then custom formatting the resulting time as HH:MM:SS. Both work. Antonio’s is one step shorter, and it’s the one I’m using in the current version of the Shortcut.

Then there’s the matter of entering in text to describe what’s gone wrong at the particular moment of the podcast being noted. Dan’s Shortcut is set up to ask for text—which frustratingly means you have click the Done button on the dialog box, because Shortcuts on macOS Monterey won’t let you use a keystroke. But it also accepts input, and this is a great workaround—especially if you use a launching app.…