So this may be a little niche but while I built this Apple Shortcut for my own specific needs and set up, it might be something that you could use and adapt for other circumstances.
Background
For several years now I’ve been part of a Formula One prediction competition. It’s run by a friend, and it’s been a fun way to add something a little extra to the F1 season. Each race we send him our prediction for the Top 10 (8 if it’s a Sprint race) which he collates and after each race we get an email with our scores, these are all kept up to date throughout the season and at the end we have a winner! There’s a trophy and everything!
It’s all a bit of fun but the one thing that can trip me up is remembering to send in my predictions ahead of the race (with a few hours in hand to allow my mate to collate them all).
I don’t currently have a subscription to Sky Sports F1 (the UK carrier) and even if I did, watching the practice sessions, the analysis, the qualifying and the race is almost an entire weekend and I just don’t have the time; I have a 4 year old, time for myself is an abstract concept at best.
So I decide to see if the technology I have could help remind me when I needed to send in my predictions.
Setup
The Formula One season is long and for each race weekend there are a number of sessions, a few practice sessions, the qualifying session and the Grand Prix race itself (two qualis and races on a weekend with sprint race as well).
When we started doing this prediction game, I would dutifully get the list of race dates and manually enter them into my calendar to make sure I didn’t forget.
These days I subscribe to an F1 calendar in Apple Calendar.
However because I subscribe I can’t change the notification times, again I spent the time to manual create a set of Reminders (my to do list app of choice) to meet my needs but it was onerous and given my computer already knew about the calendar events I looked for a way to automate this.
I tried a few different routes for this over the past few years, but it wasn’t until Apple Shortcuts finally took off that I realised I had the answer baked into my operating system.
All Hail Apple Shortcuts!
Solution
The shortcut is simple enough:
- Get the list of race events from the F1 calendar
- Create a reminder for each with a notification set 18hrs beforehand
It took me a couple of tries to get the exact combo of dates and times, but it works!
Feel free to grab a copy and amend it for your own needs, be that reminders for varying shift patterns, or reminders for the right kit for your kids sporting events, I’m sure there are many uses for what is a simple solution.
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