General
What is Charty?
Charty is an iOS app that allows you to create charts directly from Apple's Shortcuts app. It provides 26 powerful actions that let you create, style, and export beautiful charts entirely from your shortcuts.
What is Shortcuts?
Shortcuts is the tool to create automation workflows on iOS and iPadOS.
Quoting Apple: Shortcuts includes over 300 built-in actions and works with many of your favorite apps including Contacts, Calendar, Maps, Music, Photos, Camera, Reminders, Safari, Health as well as any app that supports Siri Shortcuts.
I'm a total beginner, how do I use Charty?
You'll use Charty the same way you'd create a chart on paper: gather your data, draw a chart, plot your points, and share the result.
In a shortcut, you do this by adding Charty's actions one by one:
- Use the File action to grab data from a file, use Data Jar's actions to load it, or just put some numbers in a Text action;
- Add Charty's New Chart action to your shortcut to create a chart;
- Add the Add Series To Chart action to plot your data on the chart;
- Add the Export Chart As Image action to save your chart as an image;
- Add Shortcuts' Quick Look action to preview the result right from your shortcut.
How much does Charty cost?
Charty is free to download with 5 Shortcuts actions: New Chart, Add Series To Chart, Style Chart, Delete Chart, and Get Information From All Charts.
To unlock all 26 actions and the full power of Charty, you can subscribe:
- Monthly: $0.99/month
- Yearly: $9.99/year (save 16%)
The subscription unlocks all premium actions including chart styling, data processing, CSV import, image export, widget updates, and more.
I bought Charty Premium before. Do I need to subscribe?
If you purchased the original $4.99 Charty Premium unlock, you have lifetime access to everything in Charty 2.0. You don't need to subscribe.
Features and actions introduced in future updates may require a subscription — but everything available in Charty 2.0 remains yours forever.
What kind of charts can I create with Charty?
Charty supports 7 types of series:
- Numeric series: Bar, Line, Area, and Scatter charts for plotting data over time, comparing categories, or spotting trends.
- Circular series: Pie and Donut charts for showing proportions and composition.
- Ring series: Ring charts that display progress toward a goal, similar to Apple's Activity rings. Supports grid layouts (2x2, 3x3, etc.) for tracking multiple metrics at once.
Shortcuts
What actions does Charty add to Shortcuts?
Charty adds 26 actions to Shortcuts:
| Action | Description | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| New Chart | Creates a new chart with the given title and subtitle | Free |
| Add Series To Chart | Adds a new series to a given chart | Free |
| Style Chart | Modifies the attributes of a given chart | Free |
| Delete Chart | Deletes the chart with the given ID | Free |
| Get Information From All Charts | Gets a dictionary of all charts, indexed by chart IDs, containing all available information except series points | Free |
| New Chart With Series | Creates a new chart and adds a new series to it in one step | Premium |
| Delete Series | Removes a series from a chart | Premium |
| Get Series Values | Extracts series data as newline-separated values | Premium |
| Add Series From CSV | Adds new series from a CSV file with configurable separators and decimal symbols | Premium |
| Export Chart As Image | Exports the chart as a PNG image with configurable dimensions, appearance, rounded corners, and border | Premium |
| Update Widgets | Updates the selected chart's widgets | Premium |
| Add Custom Theme | Adds the passed colors as a new theme | Premium |
| Style Axis | Configures X/Y axes with custom labels, min/max ranges, date formatting, and tick display | Premium |
| Style Bar Series | Modifies bar width, corner radius, and color | Premium |
| Style Line Series | Modifies line width, style, markers, and smoothing interpolation | Premium |
| Style Area Series | Modifies area fill, line, and marker attributes | Premium |
| Style Scatter Series | Modifies scatter marker shape and size | Premium |
| Style Ring Series | Modifies ring color, unit, and symbol display | Premium |
| Style Donut/Pie Series | Modifies per-value colors and label placement | Premium |
| Highlight Series | Highlights specific series with custom color and alpha | Premium |
| Modify Markers | Configures marker shapes (circle, square, triangle, diamond, cross, pentagon, plus, asterisk) and size | Premium |
| Add Average | Adds a series based on the average of other selected series | Premium |
| Add Moving Average | Adds a simple or cumulative moving average with configurable window size | Premium |
| Filter Data | Filters x and y lists based on comparison operators (equal, less than, greater than, between, etc.) | Premium |
| Group Data | Groups data by time periods (minute, hour, day, week, month, year) or equal values with aggregation (sum, average, count, min, max) | Premium |
| Accumulate Values | Creates a cumulative sum list from an input list | Premium |
What kind of data should I pass to Charty's values parameters?
If you have data stored as text with one value per line and no headers, you can pass the text directly as X or Y values to Charty. You'll usually be using repeat loops (either Repeat or Repeat With Each) combined with the Add To Variable action to create lists of values.
Is there anywhere I can learn more about Charty's actions?
Inside the app, you can find detailed descriptions of each action's parameters, outputs, and behavior.
Exporting
Is it possible to export images of the charts?
Yes! You can export charts as PNG images using the Export Chart As Image action directly in your shortcut, or from within the app itself.
Export options include:
- Width and Height: the dimensions of the exported image in pixels
- Appearance: Light mode, Dark mode, or follow system settings
- Transparent background: whether to use a transparent background
- Rounded corners: add rounded corners to the exported image
- Border: add a border around the exported image
How do I use the Export Chart As Image action?
Add the Export Chart As Image action to your shortcut and provide the ID of the chart you want to export. You can then configure the export parameters directly in the action — set the width, height, appearance mode, and optionally enable rounded corners, a border, or a transparent background.
The action outputs an image that you can save, share, or display using Shortcuts' Quick Look action.
Data sources
What Data Sources can I use with Charty?
Virtually any data source that provides Shortcuts support can be used with Charty.
For example, if you store data in text notes inside the Notes app, you can extract them using the Find Notes action, process it with Shortcuts, and plot it with Charty.
Does Charty support data from HealthKit?
Yes! HealthKit has great Shortcuts support. You can use the Find Health Samples action to get almost any data from HealthKit, then process it with Shortcuts and plot it with Charty.
What about APIs?
API data can also be extracted and plotted with Charty. You can use Shortcuts' Get Contents of URL action to make a request to any API, then process the JSON response and plot it with Charty.
Does Charty support CSV files?
Yes! Charty's premium Add Series From CSV action has full support for CSV files. You can select which columns should be used as X values and which as Y values, and configure custom separators and decimal symbols for international formats.
Customization
Can I change the chart theme from Shortcuts?
Yes! Use the free action Style Chart and select which theme you'd like to apply. You can also modify the default theme in Charty's settings so all new charts start with your preferred look.
Can I add custom color themes to Charty?
Yes! Use the Add Custom Theme action to create a theme from a list of colors. You can also import theme files directly into the app.
Can I add text labels to an axis?
Yes! Just pass the texts as the X values for your series and Charty will do the rest!
What line interpolation styles are available?
Charty supports 7 interpolation options for line and area series:
- Linear — straight lines between points
- Monotone — smooth curves that preserve monotonicity
- Cardinal — smooth cardinal spline curves
- Catmull-Rom — smooth Catmull-Rom spline curves
- Step Start — step function that changes at the start of each interval
- Step Center — step function that changes at the midpoint
- Step End — step function that changes at the end of each interval
You can set the interpolation using the Style Line Series or Style Area Series actions.
Can I stack series?
Yes! Charty supports multiple stacking modes for bar and area series:
- Standard — series values are stacked on top of each other
- Unstacked — series are displayed side by side (default)
- Normalized — series are stacked and scaled to 100%, showing proportions
You can set the stacking mode using the Style Chart action.
Widgets
What widgets are available?
Charty offers 5 widget types for your Home Screen:
- Chart Widget — displays a full chart (bar, line, scatter, or area)
- Ring Widget — shows a ring gauge for tracking progress toward a goal
- ML Ring Widget — a predictive ring that uses machine learning to estimate your progress
- Data Widget — displays a numeric value
- Chart + Data Widget — combines a chart with a numeric data display
Does Charty support Lock Screen widgets?
Not yet, but Lock Screen widgets are on the roadmap. Stay tuned for a future update!
How do I update widgets from Shortcuts?
Use the Update Widgets action in your shortcut. After modifying a chart's data, simply add this action to refresh the corresponding widget on your Home Screen. You can also set up an automation in Shortcuts to update your widgets on a schedule.