Remotely executing shortcuts on iOS

6 Feb 2026 19:21 | apple | apple watch | iOS | iphone

This isn’t an exploit, I just wanted to be able to execute a shortcut on iOS via a remote trigger. Specifically I wanted to dynamically change the complications on my Apple watch depending on context, for example if I have calendar events later today then show the calendar as a complication but if I don’t then show something else.

To switch the complication I can just create clones of my watch face with different complications, there’s a shortcut action called “Set Watch Face” which can change the watch face. On a mac that is always on I can poll the calendar easily enough but there’s no obvious way to trigger a shortcut execution remotely.

The way I’ve found to do this is to use focus modes - or one specific focus mode. I created a focus mode called “Update watch face” which when activated would determine what the watch face should be (based on context, calendar events etc), set it, and then revert the focus mode back to what it should be.

This works surprisingly well. The full workflow is something like this:

1) Cron script runs on a mac that polls the calendar and whatever other stuff you want to influence what your watch face should be. If differences are detected, i.e. a new calendar event or the count of calendar events that end >= now has changed, set the focus mode to “Update watch face”. Because focus modes are shared between devices this changes the focus mode on the iPhone as well.

2) Create an automation on the iPhone that executes when the “Update watch face” focus mode is enabled. This then sets the watch face to whatever it should be based on the current context.

3) In order to preserve the focus mode setting prior to this trigger occurring, on every other focus mode I set a shortcut to run when they are turned on or off. This shortcut simply gets the name of the currently activated focus mode (which might be none) and stores it as a note in a reminder.

4) In the shortcut created in step 2) after setting the watch face it reads the content of the reminder to know what the focus mode should be reverted to.

This is a relatively simple use-case for this idea but you could use the same approach to implement more generic remotely-triggered execution of shortcuts on iOS. The focus mode could trigger a shortcut which then retrieves a list of instructions from a server details what shortcuts to execute and with what parameters.

The really cool thing about this is that it’s inherently reliable because the focus mode won’t update on the phone until it has an internet connection this means that whatever gets executed when the focus mode is activated is also likely to have a working internet connection at that point.