Surprise Rickroll

What happens

At 7 AM on their birthday, it requests Never Gonna Give You Up in Apple Music or opens the track in Spotify, followed by a notification: “Happy birthday. You’ve been rickrolled.” Every other morning it checks the date and goes back to sleep.

Setup

1. Open this page in Safari on the iPhone, download the file (or AirDrop it), open it from Safari Downloads or Files, and tap Add Shortcut.
2. While importing, it asks for their birthday (MM-DD) and which music app they use (apple or spotify). Fill it in before tapping Add Shortcut.
3. Long-press it in Shortcuts → All Shortcuts → Rename and call it Morning Helper, so it doesn’t give itself away.
4. A normal test does nothing unless today matches the birthday. To test now, open the … editor, temporarily change the birthday Text action to today’s MM-DD, run while unlocked and choose Always Allow where offered, then restore the actual birthday. Confirm the Music result or Spotify page before enabling the daily automation.
5. Shortcuts → Automation → + → Time of Day, set 7:00 AM, Daily, select Run Immediately, tap Next and choose the shortcut.

Undo

Open Shortcuts → Automation, swipe left on the automation and tap Delete. Then delete the shortcut. Restore media volume and audio output in Control Center.

Variations

• Apple Music needs a subscription to play the full song. On Spotify it opens the track. Playback can require a tap in Spotify; this shortcut does not guarantee autoplay.

Test the trigger

Installing the file does not create its automation. After the manual test, trigger the event once and check the result. If the shortcut picker is unavailable, create a blank automation, add Run Shortcut, and select this shortcut. Menus, previews and app-opening actions may still need interaction or an unlocked phone even with Run Immediately selected. If it stops, run from the shortcut’s … editor to identify the failing action.