blob

blob brings binary to your shortcuts.

What is it

A demo shortcut chaining blob actions — Show alert Text, Read Text as text, Show alert blob, Print blob in hex, Show alert hex, Print blob in binary.

blob turns Shortcuts into a proper toolkit for binary data. It ships a suite of actions for encoding, decoding, and transforming bytes, plus a type-safe native format ("blob") that keeps binary and text visibly separate as they flow through a shortcut.

blob encoding

blob uses a base-256 encoding built from Braille Unicode characters. Every possible byte gets its own glyph — an assortment like ⢀⡀⠢⣒⢕⣾⢛⣿. One character, one byte. Binary data becomes compact, copy-pasteable, and visually distinct from any other encoding — so when a Shortcuts variable holds blob, you know at a glance it's bytes.

Supported encodings

Here are the five bytes of Hello rendered in every encoding blob understands:

encoding	example
blob	`⠊⢖⠞⠞⢾`
binary	`01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111`
decimal	`72 101 108 108 111`
hex	`48 65 6c 6c 6f`
base32	`JBSWY3DP`
base64	`SGVsbG8=`
base64url	`SGVsbG8`
utf8	`Hello`

Shortcuts actions

The Shortcuts action picker showing every blob action: Print Base32, Print Base64, Print Binary, Print Bytes, Print Decimal, Print Hex, Print Text, Random Bytes, Read Bytes, Substring.

Read Bytes is the main input action. Point it at any supported encoding and it returns a blob. It auto-detects by default, or you can pick the encoding explicitly.

Print Bytes goes the other way — render a blob in any encoding. For convenience, Print Hex, Print Binary, Print Decimal, Print Base32, and Print Base64 are available as dedicated actions, each returning a variable named after the encoding so chained shortcuts stay readable.

Print Text interprets a blob as UTF-8, falling back to ASCII with . placeholders for non-printable bytes.

Substring slices any string by character position.

Random Bytes returns pseudo-random bytes as a blob. (Not cryptographically secure.)

Type safety

A shortcut that takes an AWS-style access key, slices off the prefix, reads the remainder as base32, and prints the decimal account number 581039954779.

Each action is strict about what it takes in and what it produces. You can't accidentally encode an already-encoded string, and you can't interpret encoded data as if it were text. Parameter and return labels are consistent across every action, so shortcut variables stay self-describing.

The example here is a shortcut that takes an AWS-style access key, strips the prefix, reads the rest as base32, and prints the account number in decimal — each step carrying its type through to the next.

The app

The blob app showing a history thread — utf8, decimal, base64url, and blob encoded messages — with the in-app info sheet explaining blob encoding and app features.

blob is primarily a Shortcuts extension — but the app itself is a history viewer. As actions run, it records input, output, and each step of a chain so you can inspect, share, and debug.

Tap a message to copy.
Long-press for the system share sheet.
Chained actions collapse into a single thread showing the first input, the final output, and the operation icons in between.
Large payloads (over 2 kB) show a summary in the UI. The full data is always processed and returned in Shortcuts.
Shake to undo recovers a thread right after you clear it.
Pause History bypasses the app entirely — actions keep working, but nothing is recorded.

None of this is sent anywhere — everything stays on your device. Full details in the privacy policy.

Install

Bug reports, questions, or beta access — see support.