Use the Shortcuts app + Personal Automations to keep a friend accountable — automatically. Set it once, and your iPhone handles the nagging for you.

For example, you could have your phone text a friend every Friday asking if they finished that thing they keep putting off. Pick any schedule — daily, weekly, relative to sunset — and any message you want.

How to set it up

1. Open Shortcuts → Automation → + → tap Create Personal Automation.
2. Choose Time of Day — you can set a specific time, or use sunrise/sunset with an offset (e.g., 2 hours before sunset, every Friday).
3. Add action: Send Message — type your accountability prompt and pick the recipient.
4. Turn off Show Compose Sheet on the Send Message action so the message sends without any confirmation step.
5. Set Run Immediately and turn off Notify When Run so it fires silently in the background.

Keep it fresh with a random message list

If you send the same text every time, your friend will start ignoring it. A simple fix: add a List action with several variations of your message, then use Get Random Item from List to pick one each time. Pass the result into the Send Message body.

Pro tip: Use Apple Intelligence to generate the message

Want even more variety? Use the Use Model action from Apple Intelligence to generate a unique message every time. Give it a prompt like:

"Write a short, funny text reminding someone to make a beat this week. Keep it under 2 sentences. Vary the tone each time."

Then pass the generated text into the Send Message body. Now every ping feels completely fresh — and harder to tune out.

More info

For a full walkthrough on building personal automations, see Apple's guide: Create a new personal automation in Shortcuts.