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Publish Quote shortcut

Use Apple Shortcuts to publish a copied blockquote, with or without commentary, to Micro.blog.

This shortcut provides a quick and easy way to publish a quote from almost anywhere, with or without a comment, to Micro.blog. Just copy the text you want to quote, hit the share button in the toolbar to share its URL, and select this shortcut. You’re given the option to add a comment and review or edit the text before publishing.

When you add your own comment to the quote, the post adds the u-in-reply-to class to the link so that Micro.blog will automatically send a Webmention to the quoted site, letting it know that you responded on your blog.

This shortcut was adapted from a version shared by Greg Morris on Micro.blog.

Download the shortcut ↓

See It in Action

Required 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=Publish%20Quote

Known Issues

Shortcuts will ask permission to access the webpage several times for each new site you run it with. I wish that weren’t the case, but it’s just how Shortcuts works at the moment. It should only ask the first time you run this shortcut for a given site, so it gets better with time, but every new site means a few permission dialogs to tap through. And it maintains a separate list of approved sites on each device. 🙄 If/when Apple blesses Shortcuts with more sane permission options, I will weep with joy.

If you find them too annoying, I believe version 1.0 had fewer permission pop-ups and you can still download that version below (albeit with its original limited functionality).

Latest Release Notes

Version 2.1 — Updated 2024-04-11

  • Fixed a couple of bugs related to variables incorrectly converting between text and URLs (thanks Pratik and Eric!)
  • Cleaned up the final actions by reusing the text-to-publish variable so it’s more clear what’s getting updated and shared
  • Vastly simplified formatting the source’s hyperlink during setup
  • Fixed a bug regarding checking for the user’s preference for including the author’s name and checking if it’s being run on a Mac to make sure the author-name variable is passed along correctly
  • Download version 2.1
Version History

Version 2.0 — Updated 2024-04-04

  • Now you copy the quote before sharing its URL, meaning the shortcut is far more flexible and can be run from anywhere (like RSS reader apps!), not just Safari
  • Prettied up the menus
  • Added a pre-comment character count to inform comment length
  • Added setup step to optionally include the author’s name for the quoted text
  • Added a block that looks for the author’s name to include if one is found, and skips if one is not
  • Added setup option for customizing the character(s) that separate the author’s name
  • Added a setup option for customizing the emoji that starts the page’s link
  • Swapped from showing the website’s title to its base URL (because domain names are cool 😎)
  • Added a subroutine for the ’Get YouTube Video Info (HeyDingus’ Version)’ shortcut to get the title and channel name from those videos
  • Added an option to archive the post in Drafts when publishing them
  • Added an option to open the post in Drafts for further editing before publishing
  • Added workaround for running on macOS via the share sheet and Services menu
  • Added workaround for macOS’s failure to use the ‘Get Article with Safari Reader’ action like iOS

Version 1.0 — Released 2023-11-07

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. ✌️