u/ScottishHighlander02

Been reading up on these this week and decided now is the time to change. Primarily an Alexa household, I have put an order in for matter compatible bulbs to replace my cheap WiFi ones. Plugs too. Today I ordered not one but two HomePods. “Used very good condition” and “opened but never used”. £300 for both so my plan for them is stereo pair through the Apple TV. Will hold off until later in the year and get a new model for my work desk I think. Then slowly start replacing then echos throughout the bedrooms with HomePod mini’s. Can’t wait!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d1bbf1816f804d1ea945afc652d3d9dd

Description

Calendar Group Shortcut

Overview

Adds multiple Apple Calendar events at once from either typed or dictated text.

Uses ChatGPT to parse natural language input into structured event data, then loops through the results to create each event.

Input Choose from menu: • Text — type your events manually • Dictate — speak your events

How to Describe Events Speak or type naturally, for example: “Doctors tomorrow at 10am, Dentist Wednesday at 9am for an hour and a half”

Flow 1. Input Menu choice routes to either Ask for Text or Dictate Text. 2. Validation If Menu Result has no value, the shortcut stops. 3. ChatGPT Parsing The text is sent to ChatGPT with the following instruction: Extract events and return each one on a new line in this exact format: Title###YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm###YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm No preamble, no explanation. Use 24-hour time. Today is [Current Date]. 4. Loop The response is split by new lines. For each line: • Split by ### to get three parts • Part 1 → Event Title • Part 2 → Start Time • Part 3 → End Time • Add event to Apple Calendar 5. Finish Calendar app opens when all events have been created.

Notes • Do not use | as a separator — ChatGPT returns a Unicode lookalike that Shortcuts cannot split on. Use ### instead. • Shortcuts parses ISO format dates (2026-05-05 14:00) natively in the Add Calendar Event action. • The Current Date magic variable must be included in the ChatGPT prompt so relative terms like “tomorrow” resolve correctly.