Siri, Shortcuts & Spotlight
Apex Lucis answers questions from outside the app — by voice, from Spotlight, from the Shortcuts app, and from the Action Button. iPhone and iPad.
Asking Siri
Four phrases work without setting anything up.
| Say | What happens |
|---|---|
| “Get my next booking in Apex Lucis” | Siri answers with your next shoot |
| “When’s golden hour at ⟨location⟩ in Apex Lucis” | Siri answers for one of your saved locations |
| “Start my shoot in Apex Lucis” | Opens the shoot you are about to photograph |
| “Add an expense in Apex Lucis” | Opens Expenses ready for a new one |
The golden hour phrase is offered for each of your saved locations by name, so “when’s golden hour at Bamburgh in Apex Lucis” works as soon as Bamburgh is saved.
Start my shoot takes no name. Standing in a field at five in the morning the useful phrase is “start my shoot”, not the title of a job booked in March — so with nothing named it opens the next confirmed one.
Tip: These same four appear in the Shortcuts app under Apex Lucis, where you can drop them into a shortcut of your own — a “leaving for the shoot” routine that reads out golden hour and starts a playlist.
Finding things in Spotlight
Swipe down on the Home Screen and search. Your bookings, clients, locations and gear are all findable there, so a client’s name finds the client and a location’s name finds the location. Tapping a result opens it in Apex Lucis.
Note: Each device keeps its own search results up to date when you open the app on it. Delete a client on your Mac and it stops appearing in your phone’s Spotlight the next time you open Apex Lucis there.
Building your own shortcuts
The Shortcuts app can also open a particular record. Under Apex Lucis you will find Open Booking, Open Client, Open Location and Open Gear, each taking the record as a parameter, alongside the four above.
Useful combinations:
- Action Button — set it to Start My Shoot, so one press on the way out of the car opens the job
- A location automation — arriving at your usual beach opens that location
- A morning routine — reads out the next booking and today’s golden hour together
Searching inside the app
The app has its own search, on the tab bar, covering everything at once — see Navigation.