What do you actually need to know the moment you wake up? Morning Routine answers that with one tap: today’s date, the current weather, a fresh vocabulary word from Merriam-Webster, and NASA’s image of the day, all bundled into a single run so you skip four separate apps.
Inside the shortcut
The shortcut stitches together a few daily feeds and hands you the results in one pass. It reports the date and a weather read for your location, pulls the Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster so you pick up something new before coffee, and grabs NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for a bit of visual interest. Everything runs locally through Shortcuts, so there’s no separate app to open and nothing to log into.
Installing it
- Tap Add Shortcut on this page to open it in the Shortcuts app.
- Approve the import when prompted.
- Run it once so iOS can grant the location access weather needs.
Putting it to work
Tap the shortcut from the Shortcuts app or a Home Screen icon and it walks through each feed in turn, showing the date and weather first, then the word, then the NASA picture. Because it leans on your device location for the forecast, the first run prompts for a location permission. Approve that once and later runs stay quiet.
If you’d rather not press it manually every morning, pair it with a Personal Automation in the Shortcuts app. Set a time trigger for whenever you usually wake, point it at Morning Routine, and iOS will fire the whole briefing on schedule. That turns a manual tap into something closer to a genuine wake-up summary.
FAQ
Do I have to grant location access?
The weather portion needs it to know where you are, so yes for that piece. If you decline, the rest of the briefing still runs and you’ll just miss the local forecast.
Where does the word of the day come from?
Merriam-Webster’s published Word of the Day feed, the same one their site updates daily. NASA’s image is pulled from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, which also refreshes once every 24 hours.
Can it run on its own each morning?
Not by itself, but it’s easy to automate. Build a time-based Personal Automation that launches the shortcut at your usual wake time and it’ll deliver the whole rundown without you touching the screen.
