MB Photoblogger shortcut

Use Apple Shortcuts to set up and post your daily photo for the Micro.blog Community Photoblogging Challenge.

This shortcut helps you post to Micro.blog for its Community Photoblogging Challenge. It handles everything from setting up the text of the post following a consistent format, to selecting and uploading a photo and publishing it to your blog.

Some niceties:

  • It presents the day’s prompt, parsed from the last five posts to the Micro.blog Community Challenges blog.
  • You can share a photo into it via the share sheet, or it’ll offer a menu to select a photo from your device or to take a new one with the camera.
  • It can (optionally) auto-generate alt text for the photo and format it into Markdown or HTML.
  • You can (optionally) write a comment to go with the post, in case you want to call out the prompt word.

In the end, it publishes a post like this:

📷 #mbApr Day 11

My heart lives at the intersection of rock and sky.

A person in a green helmet and orange backpack sits observing a vast desert landscape with mountains in the distance under a cloudy sky.

Note that this and its partner shortcuts do take a little setup the first go ’round to post to your account and use your OpenAI credentials if you want the auto-generated alt text.

Download the shortcut ↓

See It in Action

Companion Shortcuts

Run This Shortcut

You can run this shortcut from its URL (such as from within a calendar event or to-do):

shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=MB%20Photoblogger

Latest Release Notes

Version 1.2 — 2024-04-12

  • Adjusted the composition of the final text to display better in Mastodon clients (image on the bottom)
  • Split up the RSS results to make it easier to determine the day’s prompt, and double-check that it’s for the correct day
  • Simplified how to customize the title of each photoblog post, which is done upon first setup but can be changed at any point
  • Download version 1.2
Version History

Version 1.1 — 2024-04-03

  • Added the ability to share a photo to the shortcut via the share sheet in case you already found the perfect image for the day’s prompt
  • Download version 1.1

Version 1.0 — 2024-04-01

Thanks for checking out this shortcut! It’s part of the HeyDingus Shortcuts Library. If you’re sharing my shortcuts or modifying them (or see a bug or have a feature request), I’d love to hear from you — please give me a shout! And maybe consider a donation if you find this shortcut fun or useful. Thank you. ✌️