To make a Mac shortcut accept shared images, enable Show in Share Sheet in the shortcut’s details, then set its input type to Images. The Share Sheet passes the selected image into the shortcut’s first action; choosing the input type controls when the shortcut appears and what it can receive.

Enable the shortcut in the Mac Share Sheet

  1. Open Shortcuts on your Mac and create a shortcut or double-click one you want to edit.
  2. In the shortcut editor, open Details.
  3. Select Show in Share Sheet. This adds an input action at the start of the workflow.
  4. Click the input type shown in that action—often Any—to configure what the shortcut accepts.

Apple documents this setup for running a shortcut from another app. When you first enable Share Sheet access, macOS may also require you to allow the Shortcuts sharing extension in System Settings. Run a shortcut while working on your Mac

Set the accepted input to Images

In the input action at the top of the workflow, open the type menu and choose Images as the accepted content type. If the menu shows a list of types, clear types you don’t want and leave Images enabled. Limiting the shortcut to images filters out unrelated content and helps keep it available only where compatible content is shared. Limit the input for a shortcut when run from another app on Mac

Apple defines Images to include image files from apps and the web, as well as photos shared from Photos. A shortcut set to accept only images can still appear in unexpected contexts—for example, when sharing a webpage in Safari—because the page may contain images. The source app decides what it offers to the Share Sheet, so visibility is not a guarantee that every app will provide the same kind of image input. Understanding input types in Shortcuts on Mac

Use the incoming image in your workflow

Add the action that should process the shared image after the input action. For example, to inspect or transform an image, search the action library for an appropriate action and place it below the input. Check that the action accepts image content: Apple explains that action connections indicate when output from one step can flow into the next, and incompatible input and output types may not connect.

If you need to refer to the received item explicitly in a later action, use the Shortcut Input special variable. Apple describes it as the content passed to the beginning of a shortcut that runs in another app. Many actions use the previous action’s output automatically, so an extra variable step is not always needed. Variable types used in Shortcuts on Mac

A shortcut can pass multiple items between actions, so design the workflow for the possibility that the shared content includes more than one image. Whether a particular app shares one image, several images, or content in another form depends on what that app supplies. Apple notes that content passes from action to action and that any number of items may be passed along. The flow of content in Shortcuts on Mac

Run it and troubleshoot missing shortcuts

In an app that offers a Share button, select or open an image, click Share, choose Shortcuts, select your shortcut, and click Done. Apple’s instructions describe selecting content first, then choosing the shortcut from the Share Sheet. If the shortcut is missing, check that Show in Share Sheet is on, that the allowed input includes Images, and that the app is sharing content compatible with the input type. If this is your first Share Sheet shortcut, check the Shortcuts sharing extension permission in System Settings. Run a shortcut while working on your Mac

The Receive What’s On Screen setting is a different option for providing onscreen content when running a shortcut through other methods, such as Siri. For the Share Sheet workflow in this guide, enable Show in Share Sheet and configure the input action; don’t substitute the onscreen setting. Receive onscreen items from other apps

Sources