Using Find and Filter actions

Sometimes, you’re working with a large amount of content and want to filter
down to a subset of that content using certain criteria. For example, you
might have a large list of calendar events, but only want those that have an
event location set.

Workflow provides two actions that help you in such scenarios: Find and
Filter.
Actions with the keywords “Find” and “Filter” both accept the output of
another action as input, filter the content, and pass the filtered results as
output. If nothing is passed into Find actions, however, they will retrieve
content on their own from their respective apps.

Find actions include Find Photos, Find Reminders, Find Calendar

Events, Find Music, Find Health Samples, and Find Contacts. Each of
these can filter the photos, reminders, events, and other content passed as
input, but when no input is passed, they fetch content from their respective
apps, similar to “Get” actions.

Filter actions include Filter Event Attendees, Filter Files, Filter

Locations, Filter Articles, and Filter Images. Each of these takes
content as input, narrows down the content using filters you specify, and
passes the matched results as output.
Pro Tip

If you are attempting to use two Find actions in a row without causing the
second action to filter the output of the first, place a Nothing action in
between. That way, “nothing” is passed as input to the second Find action,
signalling it to retrieve its own content.
In summary, Filter actions will only filter existing content in the workflow,
while Find actions can both find content from the device and filter existing
content.

Use the “Add Filter” button to specify criteria the action should use in its
search query. After adding a new filter, tap each colored component of the
filter to customize it.

For example, if you add a filter to Find Photos, you’ll be able to specify
Album is All Photos. The first option in a filter lets you choose the property
of the content to filter against. You can further change how the filter operates
with the second and third options, perhaps switching All Photos to one of
your photo albums to just retrieve that album’s photos. Or, you could change
is to is not if to filter out a particular album, like Panoramas, from your
results.
You can add additional filters to the action to further isolate the results you
want. Once you add multiple filters, another option appears to specify All of
the following are true or Any of the following are true, requiring that
every filter criteria be matched or at least one of the filters, respectively.
Find and Filter actions also include parameters to “Sort By” and “Limit” your
results. Tapping on “Sort By” allows you to choose a property to sort the
results by, including Random to order randomly. Certain properties like “Date
Taken” for photos also reveal additional parameters, like choosing the
“Order” as Oldest First or Latest First.

The last parameter to know about in Find and Filter actions is “Limit”, which
allows you to set a cap on the number of content items the action retrieves or
filters. Once “Limit” is toggled on, another parameter appears with a +/-
toggle for selecting the maximum number of items to get. Additionally, you
can tap on the “Get Items” field to set it using a Magic Variable or Ask When
Run, allowing you to alter the limit while the workflow is running.
Note
 When working with a large amount of content or broad queries in the Find
and Filter actions, there may be situations where a workflow may struggle
with performance when run from the Today Widget or Apple Watch. In
these cases, try using a Continue In App action to switch to the
Workflow app, or experiment with more specific filters that limit the
number of possible results.

Next, we’ll explore Using the Workflow URL scheme.