This page lists every action that Excerpt adds to Shortcuts and what each one does. If you have not built a shortcut with Excerpt before, start with Automate Excerpt with Siri and Shortcuts.
Playback and opening
- Continue Book resumes the selected book.
- Play Book starts a book you provide.
- Take Highlight saves what you have just heard as a highlight.
- Open Book and Open Highlight open that book or highlight in Excerpt.
- Open Settings opens the Settings page in Excerpt.
Sleep timer, speed, and more
- Set Sleep Timer stops playback after 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes, or at End of Chapter.
- Extend Sleep Timer adds 1 to 120 minutes to a running timer, and Cancel Sleep Timer turns it off.
- Set Playback Speed sets any speed from 0.5× to 3×.
- Return to Where I Was jumps back to where you were before your last skip or jump.
- Set Enhanced Audio turns enhanced narration on or off.
- Sync with Audiobookshelf syncs the book’s position with your server now.
Each of these returns a short message, which the shortcut can show or speak.
Ask Siri
Every phrase includes the name of the app, so that Siri knows which app to use:
| Action | Say |
|---|---|
| Continue Book | “Continue my audiobook in Excerpt”, “Resume Excerpt” |
| Play Book | “Play book in Excerpt”, “Listen to book in Excerpt” |
| Take Highlight | “Take highlight in Excerpt”, “Highlight this in Excerpt” |
| Open Book | “Open book in Excerpt” |
| Set Sleep Timer | “Set a sleep timer for length in Excerpt” |
| Extend Sleep Timer | “Extend the sleep timer in Excerpt” |
| Cancel Sleep Timer | “Turn off the sleep timer in Excerpt” |
| Set Playback Speed | “Change playback speed in Excerpt” |
| Return to Where I Was | “Go back to where I was in Excerpt” |
Find books and highlights
- Find Books filters by title, author, language, or archive status, and returns up to 200 books.
- Find Highlights filters by text, book, author, language, date created or modified, archive state, Readwise state, or transcription state, and returns up to 200 highlights.
- Count Highlights returns the number of matching highlights.
Find Books and Find Highlights return their results as Shortcuts items, so you can pass them directly into another action that asks for a book or a highlight.
Statistics and activity
- Get Library Overview summarises your library as text.
- Get Listening Activity returns a row per day of listening, editing, and highlights, for the last 30 days unless you set dates.
- Get Book Stats returns listening, editing, highlight, progress, and speed figures for one book or the whole library.
- Find Book Stats finds books by how you listen to and highlight them, such as stalled or untouched books.
- Get Highlight Stats returns word, source, and timing figures for matching highlights.
- Get Jump Stats counts skips, jumps, and relistens.
- Get Transcription Stats shows which transcription models your highlights used.
- Get Insights Report returns the Insights report as text.
- Get Active Focus Books returns up to 20 recently active books with their progress.
These actions only return data for the later steps of a shortcut to use. They do not change anything in your library.
Export and backup
- Export Highlights creates a JSON, CSV, Markdown, or HTML file for one book, or for the whole library if Book is left empty. It has the same filters as Find Highlights, but it does not take that action’s results as its input.
- Start Book Export begins preparing an audiobook file.
- Get Exported Book returns a previously prepared file.
- Export Book File prepares and returns the file in one step, waiting up to 30 seconds (this will often fail for books that are large or need to be converted, if so try preparing the export in the app first).
- Create Library Backup creates a new full-library backup.
- Get Latest Library Backup returns the newest existing backup.
The number of results is limited so that a shortcut stays responsive. If you only need some of them, add filters to the Find action rather than filtering hundreds of items in a later step.