Siri, Shortcuts and widgets

The best moment to log a spend is the moment you pay — standing at the counter, phone already in your hand. Opening an app, finding a tab and filling a form is usually enough friction to lose that moment.

So a large part of Pocketbird lives outside the app. Twenty actions let Siri, the Shortcuts app and Spotlight add a transaction, move money, change a budget or read a number back to you. Thirteen widgets put the same figures on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen and StandBy — one of them with buttons that log a transaction where you stand. Two Control Center controls, a share-sheet extension, a Spotlight index of your own rows, fourteen kinds of budgie:// link and one keyboard shortcut fill in the rest.

• Anything that reads or writes your data needs you signed in, and anything that writes also needs the privacy terms accepted. It refuses out loud — "Open Pocketbird and sign in to log expenses." / "เปิดแอป Pocketbird แล้วเข้าสู่ระบบเพื่อบันทึกรายจ่าย" — instead of queueing something you cannot see.
• Three actions answer by opening the app instead of checking anything themselves: "Quick Add" / "เพิ่มอย่างรวดเร็ว", "Scan Receipt" / "สแกนใบเสร็จ" and "Smart Paste" / "วางอัจฉริยะ". They hand you to the app, and the app shows the sign-in or consent screen itself when you land there. "Log from Image" / "บันทึกจากรูป" also opens the app, but it checks first and refuses before it scans anything.
• Every hands-free capture lands in the "To Review" / "รอตรวจสอบ" section of the transaction list, so nothing written by voice or by a widget button slips into your ledger unchecked.
• None of this is behind a subscription, a beta switch or a setting you have to turn on. The only preference in the whole area is the dismissible Siri tip in Settings, and it ships visible.

Ten of the twenty actions come with spoken phrases that work the moment the app is installed — there is no "Add to Siri" step. Forty-three phrases ship in total, each with an English and a Thai form, and they also appear as suggestions in Spotlight and as ready-made shortcuts in the Shortcuts app.

The app name has to be in the sentence — Siri needs to know who you are talking to.

• "Add Transaction" / "เพิ่มรายการ" — "Add an expense in Pocketbird", "Jot down an expense in Pocketbird".
• "Check Balance" / "เช็กยอดเงิน" — "What's my balance in Pocketbird", "How much do I have left in Pocketbird".
• "Safe to Spend" / "ยอดใช้ได้ต่อวัน" — "How much can I spend today in Pocketbird".
• "Budget Status" / "สถานะงบประมาณ" — "How's my budget in Pocketbird", "How much budget is left in Pocketbird".
• "Recent Expenses" / "ค่าใช้จ่ายล่าสุด" — "What did I spend recently in Pocketbird".
• "Upcoming Bills" / "บิลที่กำลังจะถึง" — "What bills are coming up in Pocketbird".
• "Log from Text" / "บันทึกจากข้อความ" — "Log a bank message in Pocketbird".
• "Quick Add" / "เพิ่มอย่างรวดเร็ว", "Scan Receipt" / "สแกนใบเสร็จ" and "Smart Paste" / "วางอัจฉริยะ" — "Quick add in Pocketbird", "Snap a receipt in Pocketbird", "Log from clipboard in Pocketbird". These three open the app on the right screen.

Eight actions answer a question instead of writing anything. They speak one line and show a small card, and none of them opens the app.

• Budget answers come from the same engine the Budget screen uses — your payday cycle, weekend and holiday shifting, per-cycle overrides and rollover are all already in the figure.
• Money you owe and money owed to you are summed separately and never netted into one figure — "You owe %@ in total; %@ is owed to you." / "คุณเป็นหนี้รวม %1$@ และมีคนเป็นหนี้คุณ %2$@".
• A pocket, debt, category or recurring rule you deleted after building the Shortcut answers plainly — "That pocket is no longer available." / "ไม่พบกระเป๋านี้แล้ว" — rather than silently reporting a different one.
• Signed out, every one of these answers "Open Pocketbird and sign in to see your balance and expenses." / "เปิดแอป Pocketbird แล้วเข้าสู่ระบบเพื่อดูยอดเงินและค่าใช้จ่าย".

"Add Transaction" / "เพิ่มรายการ" is the main capture. Siri asks for what it needs, confirms in place and does not open the app.

• The payment method is the last one you used inside the app, falling back to digital if you have never saved one. The saved row lands in "To Review" / "รอตรวจสอบ".
• After saving it waits for the widget snapshot to be rebuilt, so the Home Screen widget already shows the new balance by the time you look at it.
• A category, account or trip you deleted after building the Shortcut degrades to none rather than linking something else — a wrong link is worse than a missing one.
• An account you archived still shows its name inside the saved Shortcut so it does not look broken, but a new capture will not be tagged to it — it falls back to your default account.

Four more capture actions cover the cases where you have something other than a number in your hand.

Four actions change something other than a transaction. All four live in the Shortcuts app and Spotlight — none has a spoken phrase — and all four read a confirmation back to you before anything is written. There is no setting to skip that confirmation.

• A withdrawal larger than the pocket holds is clamped to the pocket balance, and the confirmation quotes the clamped figure — you are never asked to approve a number that cannot happen. An empty pocket answers "%@ has nothing to withdraw." / "%@ ไม่มีเงินให้ถอน".
• A payment larger than the debt is clamped to what is still outstanding — you cannot overpay by voice — and a debt with nothing left answers "%@ is settled." / "%@ ชำระครบแล้ว" without writing anything.
• A locked pocket cannot be raided by voice: a withdrawal answers "%@ is locked — make this withdrawal in Pocketbird." / "%@ ถูกล็อกอยู่ — ถอนรายการนี้ในแอป Pocketbird" and does nothing. Depositing into a locked pocket still works.
• Asking for a state a rule is already in is answered, not repeated — "%@ is already paused." / "%@ หยุดชั่วคราวอยู่แล้ว". A rule whose schedule ran out during the pause answers "%@ can't resume — its schedule already ended." / "%@ ทำงานต่อไม่ได้ — กำหนดการสิ้นสุดไปแล้ว".

Thirteen widgets all read one shared snapshot that the app writes after every save and every sync round. No widget does its own arithmetic, which is why a widget can never disagree with the app.

1. 1Long-press an empty spot on the Home Screen, then tap Edit → Add Widget.
2. 2Search "Pocketbird" and swipe through the sizes.
3. 3For the Lock Screen: Lock Screen → Customize → tap a widget slot → Pocketbird.

• The snapshot is rewritten after an in-app save, a Siri or Shortcuts capture, a widget-button capture, a pocket transfer or debt payment by voice, and every successful sync. On top of that each widget refreshes about every 6 hours so the day rolling over never leaves a stale number.
• With an overall budget set, the Safe to Spend, Safe to Spend Today and Dashboard widgets swap to the budget-aware daily figure and rename the label with it — "Safe to Spend per Day" becomes "Daily Budget Left" / "งบเหลือต่อวัน", "Safe/Day" becomes "Budget/Day" / "งบ/วัน". Weekly Spend is the exception: it uses the budget-aware number for its dashed line but its caption never changes.
• The Lock Screen inline slot — the single line above the clock — gets a sentence rather than a card: "Safe to spend %@/day" / "ใช้ได้วันละ %@" from Safe to Spend, or "Left %@" / "เหลือ %@" from Cycle Net. With an overall budget set the first reads "Budget left %@/day" / "งบเหลือ %@/วัน" instead.
• Money in a widget is whole baht with the satang dropped, ฿ always in front even on an English device, and a true minus sign for negatives. Tight cells fall back to ฿1.2k or ฿34k.
• Dates in widgets follow the app's language, not the phone's region — Thai shows Buddhist-era years, English shows Gregorian, matching what you see inside the app.
• A shortfall is never signalled by colour alone: a warning triangle is added and VoiceOver says it in words.
• With no data yet, most widgets show "Open Pocketbird to get started" / "เปิด Pocketbird เพื่อเริ่มใช้งาน" rather than a misleading ฿0. The Budget widget words it as "Open Pocketbird to set a budget" / "เปิด Pocketbird เพื่อตั้งงบประมาณ". Signing out clears the snapshot, so no widget can keep showing your old balance.
• In the widget gallery every widget previews with a rich sample, never the empty prompt, so you can see what each one does before you add it.

One widget is not a display — it is a keypad. "Pocketbird Quick Add" / "Pocketbird เพิ่มด่วน" shows three preset amounts, and tapping one records a transaction without the app opening at all.

1. 1Add the widget from the gallery in small or medium size.
2. 2Tap an amount. Nothing visibly opens — that is expected.
3. 3The next time you open Pocketbird, the tap is committed to your ledger and the widgets refresh.
4. 4For a note or a category, tap "More…" / "เพิ่มเติม…" instead — it opens the full Quick Add form.

• The queue holds at most 25 pending taps — older ones are dropped rather than replayed days later.
• Each tap is committed exactly once. A registry of the last 100 committed taps keeps a duplicate from appearing even if the widget and the app write at the same moment.
• If you have not accepted the privacy terms yet, queued taps are kept, not thrown away, and commit once you accept.
• Signed out, the buttons disappear and the widget reads "Sign in to Pocketbird to log from here." / "ลงชื่อเข้าใช้ Pocketbird เพื่อบันทึกจากตรงนี้". Signing out also clears the queue and the registry, so nothing replays into the next account.
• Committed rows land in "To Review" / "รอตรวจสอบ", use your last-used payment method and your default account — the same as a Siri capture.

Alongside the widget there are two controls: "Quick Add" / "เพิ่มอย่างรวดเร็ว" and "Scan Receipt" / "สแกนใบเสร็จ". Add them from Control Center (swipe down from the top-right → Add a control), from a Lock Screen bottom slot (Lock Screen → Customize), or bind one to the Action Button on iPhone 15 Pro and later (Settings → Action Button → Controls).

You do not have to leave your banking app to get a slip into Pocketbird. Share it, and Pocketbird opens on a review form built from it.

1. 1In your banking app, Photos, Messages or Notes, tap Share.
2. 2Choose Pocketbird. A short spinner appears while it reads the content.
3. 3An image is scanned and queued with a downscaled photo, then Pocketbird opens on the pre-filled review form. Text or a web link is stashed and Pocketbird opens Smart paste, already filled in.

• The extension takes one image, text, and one web link. If a share contains both an image and text, the image wins.
• Several slips shared one after another queue up and are reviewed one at a time, so nothing is overwritten.
• Signed out it refuses with "Sign In Required" / "ต้องเข้าสู่ระบบก่อน", and before you accept the privacy terms with "Consent Required" / "ต้องยินยอมก่อน". In the consent case no scan is run at all.

Separately, after every successful sync the app rebuilds an iOS Spotlight index of your own data, so you can look something up from the Home Screen without opening Pocketbird at all.

• Up to 200 of your most recent transactions, titled by the note, else the category, else the person, with the signed amount and date underneath.
• Up to 500 people, subtitled "Counterparty" / "คู่ค้า"; up to 500 pockets with their saved amount; up to 500 debts with their direction and balance.
• Business and Shop transactions are never indexed. Personal rows only.
• The index is rebuilt from scratch each sync, so anything you delete drops out of search within one sync round. Signing out, switching accounts or deleting your account wipes it immediately.

Everything above ultimately speaks one language: a budgie:// link. Fourteen shapes are recognised and anything else is ignored. Widgets, controls, the share sheet, group invites and QR codes, push notifications and the sign-in emails all produce them, and they are all parsed and dispatched in one place, which is why a link behaves the same wherever it came from.

• Capture links: quick-add opens the Quick Add sheet, scan-receipt opens it with the document scanner already running, smart-paste opens Smart paste (pre-filled if text was stashed), import-slip pops the next queued slip into the form.
• Screen links: budget, summary, debts and trips switch tabs; trips can carry a trip id to open that trip; whats-new presents the changelog sheet; feature-votes pushes the feature-vote board.
• Account links: join carries a group invite code (4–32 letters and digits, and the invite QR encodes exactly this link), group opens a group's detail, and auth-callback and password-reset come from the sign-in emails.
• A malformed trip id degrades to the Trips hub rather than failing; a malformed group id fails the whole link instead of opening the wrong group.
• Links work even while the sign-in, consent or onboarding screens are still showing: an invite or an auth link is caught at the door and replayed the moment the app is ready.

Inside the app, all of this has one home: More → Settings → "Siri & Shortcuts" / "Siri และคำสั่งลัด". It holds a live Siri tip card you can tap to add the Safe to Spend shortcut, and a button that opens the Shortcuts app straight at Pocketbird's actions. Settings is a full tab, so it sits in the More hub on iPhone unless you promoted it to the bar, and is a sidebar row on iPad.