Run a macOS Shortcut non-interactively from a shell script, piping file input and capturing typed output
domain: support.apple.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Confirm the shortcut's expected input/output types in the Shortcuts app before scripting against it
Invoke it with shortcuts run "My Shortcut" -i input.pdf -o output.txt to pass a file as input and write the result to a file
Use -i - to feed data from stdin as file-like input rather than a literal text argument, e.g. cat file | shortcuts run "X" -i -
Add --output-type public.plain-text (or another UTI) when a specific output representation is needed for downstream piping
Chain shortcuts in a script by piping one shortcuts run command's stdout into the next
Known gotchas
Omitting -i when piping causes the shortcut to receive the piped text as a literal argument rather than file input, so most file-processing shortcuts fail their type check
Shortcuts that require on-screen interaction (dialogs, Ask for Input with no default) hang indefinitely when run headless from cron/launchd since there's no UI session to respond to the prompt
The CLI runs in the invoking user's session context, so it can't drive shortcuts on a locked/logged-out Mac the way some fully headless automation setups expect
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