Problems running Shortcuts on latest OS (26.5 and other) updates

News & Updates
1

In the latest round of security updates to iOS and macOS, Apple has broken the ability to call Shortcuts and get results from other apps. This affects Drafts’ “Run Shortcut” action steps, and Shortcuts script object…as well as any other apps or automations that call shortcuts using its shortcuts://run-shortcut URL scheme with x-callback-url x-success parameters.

Apple Folks: See FB22785648

It looks like this change is part of the latest round of security patches in iOS 26.5/18.7.9and macOS 26.5/15.7.7/14.8.7. It is likely part of changes to address CVE-2026-28993.

On these OSes, any URL call to Shortcuts with x-callback-url parameters, the shortcut will still run, but even though it succeeds, Shortcuts will always fail to call the URL’s x-success callback with results, but will always call the x-error callback with errorCode=4, errorDomain=WFOutOfProcessWorkflowControllerErrorDomain.

In the case of Drafts, this will be reported as a failure of the action – and if the action relies on results returned from Shortcuts, it will not be available.

If your use of Shortcuts does not require you return to Drafts, or return values from the Shortcut, you can avoid this error for now:

  • For “Run Shortcut” action steps, uncheck the options “Return to Drafts” and “Wait for Response” - this will allow the shortcut to run without error – but will not allow you to receive responses from it.
  • For the Shortcut script object, set the shortcut.waitForResponse parameter to false before calling run - same outcome, the shortcut will be called, but Drafts will not wait for a result.
2

Thank you. This explains why my “Daily Draft” action - which pulls in OmniFocus and Calendar and Carrot Weather data - stopped working.

Is there likely to be an eventual fix?

3

Thanks for clarifying this and saving me time to troubleshoot cumbersome problems!

Out of curiosity, I just tested a workflow that uses Shortcuts to appends app and web activity to my Drafts based time tracking system, I have mentioned before. It worked as expected.

Then I updated the system to macOS Tahoe 26.5 (25F71) – and the workflow stopped working!

That was a little sad to find out but I will try to fix some kind of workaround. Of course, I would appreciate any tips on how to do it most efficiently.

4

Even with this bug, your shortcut can still directly do updates to drafts, and use the wide variety of Drafts intents - it just can’t pass information directly back to Drafts.

So, say, you could:

  • Create a “Run Shortcut” step in drafts with the content template [[uuid]], so it only passes the UUID of the current draft to Shortcuts.
  • In the Shortcut, use a “Get Draft” action to lookup the draft that matches the UUID passed to shortcut input.
  • Use “Update Draft” or other steps to modify the draft from within the Shortcut
  • End the shortcut with a “Run Action on Draft” or just “Open App: Drafts” to get back to Drafts.
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5

Thanks,

My problem was actually very easy to solve: I just used the clipboard as an intermediary, like this:

shortcut = Shortcut.create("Work", t)
shortcut.run()
// d.append(shortcut.result)
d.append(app.getClipboard())
d.update()

(My shortcut “Work” gets the app and web activity between a start time end an end time and copies the result to the clipboard.)

This seems even more efficient than before, but hard to tell since I cannot compare. So, in retrospect, I think this is hardly any limit at all.

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