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Apple's most innovate app of 2015 is one you may have never heard of: Workflow.
The app's tag line is "powerful automation made simple." It's like a Swiss army knife for completing complicated tasks, which the app calls "workflows," on the iPhone or iPad.
For example, you can use Workflow to make GIFs out of photos in your camera roll, upload the last photo you took to Dropbox, and much, much more.
Workflow is designed to make you more productive on iOS, and it has the potential to replace entire apps on your home screen.
Here's how it works:
Workflow costs $2.99 to download in the App Store, which is a small price to pay for such a powerful app.
Each colored thumbnail in the app represents a workflow.
Workflow
There's a gallery of other people's workflows that you can download for free.
Workflow
Here you'll fine some really good ones, such as:
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This workflow will make a GIF out of the last five photos in your camera roll.
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Once you download a workflow, you can customize any aspect of it. For "Photos to GIF," I tweaked it so I can manually select whichever photos I want to include and adjusted the time that each photo is shown in the GIF.
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To use a workflow, you access it from the share menu, which is usually found at the bottom left of an app.
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If you're especially creative, you can make your own workflow from scratch. You do this by chaining together actions, like opening a file in another app or opening a webpage. Simply drag an action from the left window of the app to the right "Workflow" window.
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The app can help guide you and figure out what kind of workflow you want to make.
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I made this workflow, which saves a photo, video, or link to my Dropbox account and copies a link to my clipboard — all with one tap of a button. This is useful when I want to quickly save a large file to my Dropbox account and share it with someone.
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You can get quick access to your workflows using the app's Notification Center widget.
Workflow
And workflows can even have their own app icons on your home screen.
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Workflow can do a lot, but you have to play with it for at least a day or two to understand its real potential. It could change the way you use your iPhone or iPad.
