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Logging a movie review shouldn't feel like a chore. With a bit of Shortcuts magic, you can go from "just finished watching" to a neatly structured note in seconds.
This guide walks through a ready-made Movie Review Shortcut that does all the heavy lifting – prompting you for the details, formatting everything, and dropping it straight into Anecnote.
How it works
The Shortcut runs through a quick series of prompts:
- What's the movie called?
- How would you rate it?
- What did you think? (Your written review)
- Did you watch it at the cinema or at home?
- If at home, which platform?
Once you've answered, it builds a formatted note and sends it to Anecnote automatically. You can even have it open the note afterwards if you want to keep writing.
Behind the scenes, it's using Anecnote's custom URL scheme — a way of passing data directly into the app via a specially crafted URL:
anecnote://new?title=…&content=…&category=…&tags=…The Shortcut handles URL encoding too, so you don't have to worry about spaces or special characters causing problems.
Why build it this way?
The real appeal here isn't just movie reviews – it's the pattern itself.
Shortcuts is great at collecting input, shaping it, and sending it somewhere useful. Pair that with Anecnote's automation support, and you've got a system that takes a repeatable task and turns it into a two-tap workflow.
Once you've got the hang of it, the same approach works for daily journals, book notes, podcast highlights, meeting summaries – anything you find yourself formatting the same way over and over.
Tip: In the Shortcut there are extensive notes telling you about the various steps used in the flow so be sure to read these. They will help you be able to create alternative flows for different purposes.
Getting started
- Open the Shortcut link
- Tap Add Shortcut
- Run it and follow the prompts
That's it. Give it a go after your next watch.
