iPhone Tip. Message Shortcut. For someone that you send messages to a lot, would it be handy to have a shortcut on your home screen that when you double tap it, it brings up messages, fills in who it is to automatically, and it puts you in the edit field ready to type your message. Well, this can be done pretty easily using the shortcuts app and something called an URL Action. Here are the steps.
1, Open the shortcuts app and choose Create New Shortcut.
2, Need to search for the shortcut action to use. Go to the bottom of the screen and swipe left going back up the screen. After the dictate button will be the search edit box.
3, In the edit box, just type, Open Url.
4, Swipe right, and one of the search results will be Open URLS, double tap on that.
5, Go to the top of the screen if not there.
6, As you swipe, you will come to a done button, then you will hear, Open URLS, draggable, show actions menu, swipe one more time and you should hear, Open, URL. This is where you need to be.
7, Now, flick down and choose Edit URL. This will open an edit box and put the keyboard at the bottom of the screen. Even though you can swipe around the screen, you can still type in this edit box.
8, So type, with no spaces, sms, colon, then the phone number of the person you want to make this link for.
9, All done making the shortcut. Go to top of screen and hit the done button. Now you have to rename it and add it to your home screen.
Renaming Shortcut.
1, From the top of the screen, swipe and you should hear, Open URLS. This is the shortcut that you just made!
2, Do a single finger triple tap on the shortcut to bring up a pop up menu. Now while swiping across voiceover does not have focus on what it reads to you, so you have to go past what you are looking for and then swipe back before making your choice. So swipe across until you hear details, then swipe back to rename and Double tap it.
3, A rename window will pop up, swipe across and enter the name in the edit field.
4, Once finished, hit the done button.
Adding to the Home Screen.
1, do a single finger triple tap on the shortcut like you did before. This time choose details. Remember, to make sure voiceover has focus on the correct thing, swipe past the details button, then go back to it.
2, On the details screen, swipe to the button that says, Add To Home Screen. This will add the shortcut to your home screen. If you need to, you can move this shortcut just like you move any of apps, and put it where you want.
Enclosing, I do realize that there are other ways of sending messages, like with Siri, or maybe by using a widget. But for those who normally open the messages app, go to the compose button, or to the person in their list of conversations, this is definitely a quicker way. The best thing is that there are multiple ways of doing it, and having choices is always a good thing! 😄 #iPhone#Tip#Shortcuts#Messages#Homescreen#Quick#Easy#blind#Accessible
@ChrisChaffin You may want to add an example of the sms: URL since you simplified it and actually used the word colon. But thanks for this, I didn't know you could directly open a URL like that. I probably don't use Shortcuts to even 2% of its potential.
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