Simon B. Støvring22h ago

When an App Intent lives in the host app and runs the app intent “in the background” on macOS, it still launches the app and puts it in the Dock.

Technically that makes sense, because that’s just how Mac apps behave when launched. But it doesn’t really feel like background execution to me.

Show threadSimon B. Støvring

This can’t really be how it’s supposed to work, right?

My app gets launched just from opening a shortcut that uses one of my app’s actions, because Shortcuts runs an entity query to validate the selected entity. That feels like something that should happen quietly in the background, without surfacing the app in the Dock.

Even just opening a shortcut to edit it ends up launching my app, which seems off.

What am I doing wrong? 🤔

Apr 5 at 2:15pmIvory for Mac
Show threadSimon B. Støvring20h ago

Now Shortcuts is no longer launching my app and I didn't change a line of code. It happened consistently ~25 times before and now it doesn't.

So... Is it a bug in Shortcuts? Is it a bug in my app caused by a race condition? 🤷‍♂️

I'll need to dig deeper.

My current theory is that it's either Shortcuts acting up or me setting an Activation Policy at an unfortunate time.

Show threadEdward Munn19h ago
@simonbs My Maps Shortcuts that I have used for years have broken on iOS 26.4.
Show threadPoor Signal2h ago
@edmn @simonbs Had to chop out a feature of my calendar shortcuts that gets the map url from a calendar entry as it recently started hanging. Anything to do with maps/locations and their URLs has been a total shit show for several years now.
Show threadPoor Signal2h ago

@simonbs Things randomly not working or mysteriously hanging are key features of shortcuts.

If a day goes by without me having to debug one of my shortcuts - then it's a good day.