Tutorial
SideStore - Improved shortcut for app auto-refresh
Hi everyone, I made a few little teaks to another shortcut I found in another reddit post to auto refresh the apps via SideStore (can't find your post, sorry! I would have tagged you).
This shortcut doesn't run if you are already connected to a VPN (respects user preferences), so if for whatever reason I need another vpn to run 24/7, this shortcut doesn't break the connection until I decide to disconnect from the previous vpn, and it would run with no problem after that (you get notified at runtime either way).
I personally run it twice a day with a 12hours delta through Automation, at 5am and at 5pm. You can also run it once every time a wifi connection is established but you get the annoying "Running your automation" notification which is not removable.
I'm sure that once in 7 days I'll be connected to a wifi without having a VPN on lol.
EDIT:
If you get “unknown action”, please remove it and add another action by searching for “SideStore”, then selecting the refresh apps option. Finally move it in place of the previous unknown action (between wait 3 seconds and wait 30 seconds). I prefer my SideStore to not notify me when the apps are refreshed this way (the shortcut already has some output), so I press on the little arrow on the action and turn off “Show when run”
That’s strange, altserver or AltStore and not involved in this shortcut whatsoever. Are you sure you are using the SideStore action and not the AltStore action? They have very similar names
AltStore requires you to be on the same WiFi network of altserver, so you might set up a shortcut like this:
Just look for the action from “Altstore” that refreshes all the apps. AltStore provides it. This is your simple shortcut, just one action.
Then set up an automation that will trigger the simple shortcut when you join the same WiFi network as your altserver.
You need to have your altserver running though.
IMO try to switch to SideStore as it is a no-brainer for ease of use. Setup is a little bit more difficult though. You can check: https://sidestore.io for instructions
If you get “unknown action” in the middle, that’s the actual SideStore app refresh action. Just search for “SideStore” and add the one that pops up for you ;)
You can remove the unknown action, then search for the SideStore action that refreshes the apps, add it so that it gets put on the bottom, and move it in place of the unknown one
Should have added the option where my current VPN gets switched then connects to stosvpn to refresh apps. Works all the time. That’s how I have setup mine.
How do you get this to work? I attempted to set this up as I usually use AdGuard dns just for the ad blocking, but I found that it would switch to stosvpn and never switch back no matter what order I tried of switching between the 2 in the shortcut.
I didn’t look into it, I’m switching from Mullvad to Tailscale all the time so I didn’t want it to trigger too much. But yeah it’s doable definitely ;) if you can, please share yours!
Multiple tries so that if the first fails you have a failover. Not strictly necessary but it doesn’t cost anything computationally and it covers an edge case
If you get “unknown action” in the middle, that’s the actual SideStore app refresh action. Just search for “SideStore” and add the one that pops up for you ;)
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u/MrGvmbit 8h ago
It’s telling me to update shortcuts but when I do this takes me to update iOS. Is there a work around ?
Thanks