I recently came across a forum thread mentioning that Siri can describe what’s on your screen. That got me thinking: if Siri already has this capability built in, why not package it into a simple Shortcut and trigger it with a VoiceOver gesture? This way, there’s no need to deal with API keys, tokens limits, or third‑party services.
So I tried it — and it works perfectly on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, with zero API keys or extra setup. Now I’m curious whether it works just as smoothly for others.
I’m sharing the Shortcut below. If you have a moment, please try it out and let me know how it behaves on your device and iOS version:
👉 Shortcut link:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c137b61525684f1f90058db9f301d6a3
How to use it:
1. Install the Shortcut (named Screenshot Describer).
2. Go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Commands > All Commands > Shortcuts.
3. Assign Screenshot Describer to your preferred VO gesture.
What I’ve observed so far:
• It’s much faster than any dedicated description app I’ve tried.
• If I open the Camera app and trigger the gesture, it instantly takes a screenshot of the viewfinder and describes what the camera sees — great for quick real‑world object descriptions.
• I may create another version that takes a photo directly instead of screenshotting the camera preview.
The best part: I didn’t write a single line of code. This was all done through the Shortcuts app using suggested actions and variables.
Note: The Shortcuts app still has some VoiceOver quirks — UI elements sometimes stop being read, and certain functions require long‑pressing or navigating inconsistent actions. So creating a shortcut is a bit painful. Might require a bit of patience.
Let me know how it works for you.
By SeasonKing, 23 January, 2026
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
THANK you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this.
I'm trying to figure out how to have it use voiceover rather than the speak text action since the text doesn't currently display the description, plus as a disclaimer, this will only work on apple intelligence devices.
@Quinton Williams
A quick check tells me that you can replace speak text action with show content action. It automatically picks up the variable name, and then you get a dialog box with text results, which you can review with VO, and a cancel/done button, clicking either of those closes the dialog box.
Glad to see it's working. For the first time something I created works for someone else other than me.
I think Be My AI has some serious competition here, there's a way to do follow up, so you can chat with AI and ask for more details, similar to Be My AI. I haven't enabled that, as I don't need it.
What I would like to do is get VO focus object captured rather than entire screen, and get description of just that object. I know, VO already does that, but, this way, I will get way more detailed descriptions.
Shortcuts accessibility, or lack there of.
Is it just me, or is editing anything having to do with AI actions completely inaccessible?
I tried to add an input box to ask follow up questions, but the action and its settings only appear to be visible only under screen recognition, and even that isn't exactly usable.
On its own, it doesn't even seem as though voiceover is seeing anything other than the standard buttons like play, redo, undo, etc.
Re: Shortcuts accessibility, or lack there of.
I actually have to agree. Accessibility of the Shortcuts app has been bad for some time already. From my experience while it is possible to get to the place to add actions with standard VO gestures, once you add an action somehow the main interface (the portion where you can rearrange actions) becomes pretty much inaccessible with VO (screen recognition may work, haven't really tested it out though).
Re: Re: Shortcuts accessibility, or lack there of.
It seems like the blank screen situation after adding a new action is pretty much the only accessibility issue in the Shortcuts app. Although this is quite annoying, to fix the problem, simply close Shortcuts from Recent Apps and open them again. Perhaps it is also not very convenient that moving individual actions does not have corresponding options in the VO rotor, i.e. you have to move items almost at random until they are in the right place.
Otherwise, Shortcuts seems completely accessible—any action can be performed either through the item menu or using the VoiceOver rotor. In this case, you can even use quite complex scenarios, such as complex conditions in if, menus for selecting actions, and so on. It also seems not very convenient that when you need to enter some labels, for example, the name of a variable, VO does not detect a separate text field, i.e. The keyboard appears, but you have to enter text without the ability to check what you have written. However, this seems to me more like an annoying inconvenience than a critical bug.
@user26335377
Have you created a shortcut while dealing with these bugs?
Is your comment sarcastic?
No accessibility professional calling this pile of bugs accessible, specially since non-VO users aren't having similar experience, so why should just VO users have to deal with this big tech BS despight paying equal.
@user26335377
I totally disagree. What you've mentioned are major accessibility issues, that prevents VO users from being able to effectively create shortcuts in iOS. I've been experiencing these issues myself, and I can tell you right now, as a VO user they're super annoying. And as of iOS 26.2.1 these issues are still present, and that blank screen issue occurs as soon as I go into the search action text box and leave; no actions have been added or anything. This effectively renders the Shortcuts app unusable for VO users.
SeasonKing, Nut
Yes, I have created about 10 Shortcuts for personal use, a third of them contain more than 100 actions.
I'm not saying that these accessibility issues don't impact the user experience at all. However, my opinion is that it is quite possible to learn to interact with them. Is it convenient? No. Is this better than simply abandoning such a powerful automation tool? Definitely yes.
And, in fact, over quite a long period of experience using various assistive technologies on a variety of platforms, I have come to the conclusion that an uncompromising level of accessibility is extremely rare, especially in applications for general use. Consequently, we either need to learn to deal with the accessibility problems that exist and will continue to exist in the vast majority of interfaces, or we must dramatically limit the range of software we use to those single applications that do not have such problems.
Or, you could just advocate for better
Rather than giving up, we must voice our issues. Acceptance of mediocrity breeds mediocrity.
@SeasonKing
I absolutely agree. Rather than accepting the terrible state of accessibility of the Shortcuts app, we can always advocate for Apple to make it fully accessible again, like in the app's early days.
Perhaps someone needs to start a petition on change.org or something...I'll definitely put my name on there.