If you own a MacBook and haven’t opened Shortcuts, you’re probably leaving real productivity on the table. Not theoretical productivity. The kind that actually saves time during the day. Apple built Shortcuts into macOS as a first-class automation system, and when you pair it with something like Hermes Voice for speech-to-text, it quietly changes how you work.
This is not about building flashy automations you show once and forget. It’s about removing friction. Especially around writing, capturing ideas, and moving text where it needs to go without breaking your flow.
Shortcuts is powerful on its own. With Hermes Voice in the loop, it becomes something closer to intent-driven computing.
What Shortcuts on Mac actually is
Shortcuts is Apple’s visual automation system. Instead of writing scripts, you connect actions together. One step leads to the next. Get input. Transform it. Send it somewhere useful.
On macOS, this matters more than on iPhone. You have windows, files, menus, keyboard shortcuts, and real workflows. Shortcuts can interact with all of it.
Finder. Notes. Mail. Safari. Files on disk. And now, Hermes Voice.
That last part is important.
Why Shortcuts feels different on macOS
Shortcuts on a MacBook isn’t about tapping buttons. It’s about reducing context switches.
You’re already typing. Or speaking. Or thinking through something messy. Every extra click pulls you out of that moment.
macOS lets Shortcuts run from Spotlight, keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, and Services. That means you don’t “go use Shortcuts.” It comes to you.
Once you add Hermes Voice dictation into that flow, the Mac starts behaving less like a machine you operate and more like one that listens.
Open Shortcuts, then ignore most of it
Open the Shortcuts app. You’ll see Apple’s Gallery full of prebuilt examples. They’re fine. Most of them won’t stick.
Click “New Shortcut.”
On the left, there’s a search bar. Use it constantly. Don’t browse. Search for what you want to do.
Text. Files. Notes. Hermes Voice.
Shortcuts rewards exploration. You don’t need a plan. You just need a vague sense of what annoys you during the day.
A first shortcut that actually changes behavior
Create a shortcut called “Capture Thought.”
Add an action from Hermes Voice that records and transcribes speech.
Set it to stop on silence or a hotkey.
Pipe the resulting text into “Create Note.”
Optionally tag it or prepend a timestamp.
Assign a keyboard shortcut.
That’s it.
You’ve just removed the friction between having a thought and storing it somewhere reliable. No typing. No switching apps. No half-written notes you forget to save.
You talk. The Mac listens. The text lands exactly where you want it.
This is where productivity stops being abstract.
Why Hermes Voice matters more than built-in dictation
Apple’s dictation works, but it’s generic. It doesn’t understand your workflow. It doesn’t care where the text goes next.
Hermes Voice is different because it’s designed to be part of automation, not just a keyboard replacement. When it integrates with Shortcuts, speech-to-text becomes an input primitive, not a feature you toggle.
You’re not just dictating. You’re triggering workflows.
That distinction matters more than people realize.
Real Mac workflows powered by speech
Here’s where things get interesting.
You can build shortcuts that:
Dictate meeting notes and append them to a single running document.
Speak an email draft and open it in Mail, ready to send.
Dictate code comments into your editor without touching the keyboard.
Capture ideas while walking, then sort them later.
Because Hermes Voice feeds clean text directly into Shortcuts, you decide what happens next. The Mac stops asking questions and starts following instructions.
Once you get used to that, typing everything feels unnecessarily slow.
Automation should feel invisible
There’s a temptation to build elaborate shortcuts. Conditionals. Branches. Fancy logic.
Most of those don’t survive contact with real work.
The shortcuts you keep are boring in the best way. One trigger. One result. Minimal thinking required.
I have one shortcut that takes dictated text from Hermes Voice and appends it to a daily log file. I never open that file manually. It just grows quietly in the background.
That’s the ideal. If a shortcut announces itself, it’s probably too loud.
Triggering shortcuts without thinking
On Mac, how you trigger a shortcut matters as much as what it does.
Keyboard shortcuts are the fastest.
Spotlight is great when you’re already searching.
Services are perfect for selected text.
The menu bar works for muscle memory.
Hermes Voice fits naturally into all of these. You don’t need a separate app window or mode. You speak, the shortcut runs, and you keep moving.
The fewer decisions required, the more often you’ll use it.
Shortcuts as Apple’s long game
Apple is clearly investing in Shortcuts as a system-level automation layer. Every macOS release gives it deeper hooks into apps, windows, and system actions.
Third-party apps integrating with Shortcuts aren’t doing it for fun. They’re doing it because users actually rely on these workflows.
Speech-to-text is especially well suited here. When dictation becomes composable, it stops being a novelty and starts being infrastructure.
That’s where Hermes Voice fits.
When Shortcuts is not the answer
Shortcuts isn’t a replacement for everything.
If you need complex logic, heavy data processing, or deeply conditional automation, other tools still win. Shortcuts is opinionated. Visual. Sometimes stubborn.
But for everyday Mac productivity, especially around writing, note capture, and automation driven by speech, it hits a rare balance.
Powerful enough to matter.
Simple enough to stick.
The mindset that makes this all click
Don’t ask what Shortcuts can do.
Ask what you keep doing manually.
Every repeated action is a candidate. Most won’t be worth automating. A few will quietly change how your day feels.
Once you experience speaking an idea and having it land exactly where it belongs without thinking about it, you stop seeing automation as a feature.
It becomes a habit.
And habits compound.
