Summary
- Break the doomscrolling cycle with shame-inducing AI-generated messages using the Shortcuts app.
- Create snarky messages using Claude or ChatGPT to berate you whenever you open social media apps.
- Make the shortcut read the snarky messages aloud at full volume, nagging you every five minutes until the app is closed.
I am a total sucker for doomscrolling. I find it incredibly hard to tear myself away from the endless stream of miserable stories on apps such as Reddit. Unfortunately, the current levels of doom are so high that there’s barely enough time in the day to scroll through it all. I needed a way to break the cycle and wondered if I could get my phone to shame me into stopping.
The Idea Behind My Shortcut
After wasting a couple of hours doomscrolling, I almost always feel shame that I frittered away some more of my life reading depressing content. I wanted to come up with a way to give me the same sense of shame before I even start to doomscroll. What I really wanted was someone who could stand over my shoulder and call me out on my ridiculous behavior.
Then I realized I kind of already have that on my phone. AI chatbots can easily generate messages snarky enough to at least make me think about whether I’m making sensible life choices. Since it is possible to trigger a shortcut whenever you open a specific app, I was pretty sure that there would be a way to make ChatGPT or another AI chatbot call me out whenever I opened Reddit.
Getting AI to Generate a Snarky Message
The first thing to do is create a message that is mean enough that it will at least make you stop and think about whether you should be wasting your time scrolling through depressing stories on social media. You can write your own message if you want, but the message will always remain the same each time it appears.
You could write multiple messages and have the shortcut show one at random, but eventually you’ll start seeing the same messages again.
This is where large language models (LLMs) can help. If you have apps such as ChatGPT or Claude installed on your iPhone, you can use them within your shortcuts. You can ask them to generate a snarky message for you, so that each time the shortcut runs, you’ll have a completely new message to berate you for wasting your life. It’s a much more effective way to pile on the guilt until you put your phone down.
Creating Your Message Using Claude
For my shortcut, I ended up using a free account on Claude, despite having a subscription to ChatGPT. This is because it’s possible to use Claude to generate a message without it being displayed on your iPhone. This doesn’t seem to be the case if you use ChatGPT.
You may not want the text to be displayed, for reasons explained later. However, if you prefer to use ChatGPT, the steps are almost exactly the same; just use the “Ask ChatGPT” action in place of the “Ask Claude” action. Whether you want to use Claude or ChatGPT, you’ll need to have the relevant app installed on your iPhone.
Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and tap the “+” (plus) button in the top-right corner to create a new shortcut. Tap “Search Actions,” type “Claude,” and select “Ask Claude” from the results.
Tap “Message” and enter a prompt to generate your message. You can tailor this to your own preferences, but I went with “Generate a short snarky message telling me to stop doomscrolling and calling me out for it.”
The free version of Claude has a fairly low limit for free messages. If you doomscroll too much, you may call on Claude too many times. When you run out of free messages, the shortcut will stop working for a few hours until your quota is restored.
Displaying Your Snarky Message
There are two methods I considered for my shortcut. The first was to get the snarky message to display on the screen. While I thought this would help a little, it wouldn’t have quite the same impact as someone standing over my shoulder berating me. My second method was to get my iPhone to speak the snarky message aloud.
The first method is easy because you don’t need to change anything. By default, both the “Ask Claude” and “Ask ChatGPT” actions have the “Show When Run” option turned on. This means that when the shortcut runs, the generated message is displayed on my iPhone.
If you only want your shortcut to display the message, and not speak it aloud, tap the name of the shortcut at the top of the screen, select “Rename” and give it a name. Tap “Done” to save it, and then skip to the “Running Your Shortcut When You Open an App” section below.
Getting the Shortcut to Speak the Message Aloud
I wanted to go for the nuclear option and have the message read out loud. Not only would this have more of an impact, since I couldn’t just dismiss the message, but it would also be far more embarrassing if I was doomscrolling around other people, giving me even more incentive not to do so.
I ran into a problem, however. I wanted to ensure that the spoken message was as loud as possible for the most embarrassment. Using the Shortcuts app, you can set the volume for media on your iPhone, but this doesn’t affect the volume of the “Speak Text” action which I was planning to use. I found a workaround by getting the shortcut to create an audio file from the text, and then having the shortcut play the audio at full volume.
Since the shortcut will turn the volume up when it plays the message, I wanted to have it return the volume to the previous level once the message had been played. It’s possible to get the current volume of your iPhone, and I could then add a final action that would return the volume to its previous level.
Speaking the Message Aloud
Once I’d figured out how to make the shortcut speak aloud at full volume, it was easy enough to create. Full volume is seriously loud, so you may want to set it to a lower level for your own shortcut.
In the shortcut, tap the arrow at the end of the “Ask Claude” action. Toggle “Show When Run” off. This stops the message from being displayed on your iPhone.
Search for “Spoken” and select “Make Spoken Audio From Text.” The action should automatically populate with the “Ask Claude” variable, which will generate the audio using the message that Claude creates. Tap the arrow and select your voice of choice. I’m using the same voice that I use for Siri as some of the other voice options are fairly poor. You can use the sliders to change the rate and pitch if you want.
Search for “Get Device” and choose “Get Device Details.” Tap “Device Name” and select “Current Volume.” This saves the current volume which I can use later.
Search for “Set Volume” and select “Set Volume” from the results. Tap “50%” and use the slider to set your volume. I went for 100% as I want the message to be spoken as loudly as possible for the maximum impact.
Search for “Play Sound” and select the “Play Sound” action. Tap the arrow and select “Choose Variable.” Select “Spoken Audio” from the list to get the shortcut to play the audio file of your snarky message.
Search for “Set Volume” and select the “Set Volume” action. Press and hold “50%” and select “Current Volume.” This will return your iPhone to the original volume level.
Tap the name of the shortcut, select “Rename” and give the shortcut a memorable name, then tap “Done.”
Your completed shortcut should look something like the following:
Running Your Shortcut When You Open an App
All that’s left is to get your shortcut to run when you open the app you use for doomscrolling. For me, that’s mostly Reddit, which is where I get much of my news. You can select multiple apps if you doomscroll on different platforms, and the shortcut will run when you open any of them.
In the Shortcuts app, tap the “Automations” tab. Tap the “+” (plus) icon in the top-right corner of the screen. Scroll down and select “App.”
Ensure that “Is Opened” is selected, tap “Choose” and select the appropriate apps. For me, it’s Reddit, but you can select multiple options.
Tap “Done” and select “Run Immediately” so that the Shortcuts app won’t ask you for confirmation to run your shortcut. Keep “Notify When Run” off, as you’ll know when the shortcut runs. Tap “Next.”
Under “My Shortcuts” you should see the shortcut you just created. If you don’t see it, tap “My Shortcuts” to search through them all. Select your doomscrolling shortcut, and your automation is created.
Now, whenever you open the selected apps, your shortcut will run, which will hopefully be enough to shame you into stopping your unnecessary doomscrolling.
How to Get the Shortcut to Keep Nagging You Every Five Minutes
The idea behind this shortcut is to stop doomscrolling before it happens. However, sometimes the urge to doomscroll is so strong, you can manage to get past the embarrassment of being called out by an electronic device and carry on doing it anyway. If this is happening to you, you can add a little more to your shortcut, so that it will continue to pester you at regular intervals until you close the app.
Open your shortcut, search for “Wait” and select the “Wait” action. Tap “1 second” and set the interval that you want. I chose “300 seconds” for a five-minute pause.
Search for “Get Current” and select “Get Current App.” Search for and select the “If” action. “Current App” should automatically be selected as the condition. Tap “Choose” and select the app you use to doomscroll, which is Reddit for my shortcut. If you’ve set up your automation run when you open multiple social media apps, tap the “+” (plus) button and add more “If Current App is” conditions to include the other apps.
Search for and select “Stop This Shortcut” and drag the action so that it is beneath the “Otherwise” action. This ensures that after five minutes if the current app is still Reddit, the shortcut will carry on running, but if you’ve closed Reddit, the shortcut will stop.
Search for “Repeat” and select the “Repeat” action. Drag the “Repeat” action to the very start of the shortcut, and the “End Repeat” action to the very end. Tap “1 time” and increase the value to a much higher number so that the shortcut will continue to repeat indefinitely until Reddit is closed.
Now when I open Reddit, the shortcut starts and calls me out. After five minutes, it checks if Reddit is still the current app in use. If it is, the shortcut starts again from the beginning, calling me out with a different snarky message. It’s only when Reddit is no longer the active app that the shortcut ends, and the snarky messages will stop.
Technology makes it incredibly easy to doomscroll, learning your habits and feeding you the exact type of miserable content that you can’t help but keep reading. Thankfully, technology also offers a way to escape the cycle. You can use the Shortcuts app to create a tireless nagging machine that will continue to audibly berate you until you stop doomscrolling and go touch some grass.
