Free automation · The ETA button

Leaving from somewhere new, and one tap tells them when.

The arrival text handles the drive home from work. The ETA button is for everywhere else: practice, the store, a friend's house. Tap it on your home screen, and it checks live traffic from where you are and texts your family the time you'll actually pull in.

What it does

One tap reads the traffic between where you are and home, and sends your arrival as a clock time.

What you need

An iPhone with the Shortcuts app. It installs from a link, and the steps below cover the rest.

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Running iOS 27?

Two things look different in Shortcuts. When you create a new shortcut, the first screen asks you to describe it in words. Skip that and tap Edit in the top right to get to the action list the steps below use. Some phones skip the describe screen and land on the action list straight away. And automations no longer have their own tab. The trigger now sits at the top of the shortcut itself, as the first block. The steps below are written for iOS 27, with a short note under each trigger step for iOS 26 and earlier.

If you set up before updating, nothing changes. Your automations moved over on their own. The steps below build everything by hand so everyone gets the same result, whichever version you are on.

New · The ETA button

Home doesn't come from one place.

What it does: the arrival text above runs by itself and only knows about one place. This one lives on your home screen. Tap it from school pickup, the store, or the side of a soccer field, and it texts your arrival time from right where you are standing. That is the whole trade. Hands free and fixed, or one tap and anywhere.

Setup 2 min In Shortcuts Trigger You tap it

The steps

1

Tap the link below on your iPhone and tap Add Shortcut. It asks for your home address, street, city, state and zip,* and then who gets the text. Tap the plus and pick them from your contacts.
Get the ETA shortcut

* Outside the US? The questions expect a state and a zip code, so tap Skip Setup instead. Then open the shortcut, fill in the Street Address action at the top yourself, Region included, and tap Recipients in the Send action to pick your person.

2

Run it once, now. Tap the shortcut in your library. Your phone asks to use your location and to send a message. Tap Allow on both, so neither question comes up on the way to the car.

3

Put it on your home screen so it is one tap. Open the shortcut, tap the i at the bottom, and tap Add to Home Screen, the first item on the Details sheet. On iOS 26 or earlier, press and hold the shortcut in your library, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.

The Details sheet with Add to Home Screen as the first item

Good to know · changing the message

The message is the Text action in the middle. Tap into it and say it however your house talks. Keep the Arrival Time pill where it is. That pill is the clock time you pull in, not how long the drive is, and only one of those is a number anybody can plan around.

Fix · it never asked me anything

You tapped Skip Setup on the way in, so the questions were never answered. Delete the shortcut from your library and add it again from the link. This time answer the questions. Outside the US, that skip was on purpose, so fill the fields in by hand as the note under step 1 says.

Good to know · reading it before it goes

It sends the moment you tap it. If you would rather see the message first, open the shortcut, tap the arrow on the Send action, and turn Show Compose Sheet on.

Fix · why not make this one automatic too

Because it does not know where you are going to be. The arrival text above watches one place. This one is for everywhere else, and you are the one who knows when you are leaving.

Good to know.

For the drive home from the same place every day, the arrival text sends it without a tap.

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The same idea, for the whole day.

The ETA button answers one question before anyone asks it. The Automation Kit does that for the rest of the day, starting with a text every morning with each person's day in it.

See the Automation Kit →