App Shortcuts
Integrate your app’s intents and entities with the Shortcuts app, Siri, Spotlight, and the Action button on supported iPhone and Apple Watch models.
Overview
Create a preconfigured App Shortcut that enables people to discover and run your app intent without any configuration. By creating App Shortcuts, you make your app’s functionality instantly available for use in Shortcuts, Spotlight, and Siri from the moment a person installs your app — without any setup in the Shortcuts app or an Add to Siri button. On iPhone models that support the Action button, people can associate your preconfigured App Shortcut on the Action button for quick access of your app’s functionality.
Key app functionalities that people use to complete a task quickly and that you expose to the system with app intents are great candidates for App Shortcuts. For each high-value app intent, create an App Shortcut that specifies the intended action, the required parameters, the spoken phrases someone uses to run it, and the short title and the image that appear in the Shortcuts app.
To offer an App Shortcut:
Create an app intent for a key app functionality as described in Creating your first app intent.
Create the AppShortcut object for your app intent using the init(intent:phrases:shortTitle:systemImageName:) initializer with phrases people can use to run the app intent and with the metadata that appears in the Shortcuts app.
Implement the AppShortcutsProvider protocol that provides the App Shortcuts you offer to the Shortcuts app.
With these three steps, you make your app’s functionality more discoverable and enable people to interact with your app in a lightweight way. However, the system displays a default interface for your App Shortcut. To display a custom view for each shortcut, return a SwiftUI view in your app intent’s perform() method.
Offer App Shortcuts with preconfigured parameters
With App Shortcuts, you can also preconfigure phrases for app intents that use specific parameters. When you include parameters, people can use one phrase to start an interaction with an app without Siri having to ask for clarification. For example, a meditation app could offer an app intent to start a meditation with the phrase “Start a meditation”. Because the app offers many different meditations, Siri would require an additional clarification which meditation a person wants to start.
With an App Shortcut, you can supply preconfigured parameters ahead of time that enable a person to skip this clarification step. For example, the meditation app could provide parameterized phrases where each phrase represents a common meditation. A person could then start a meditation with one phrase like “Start a mindfulness meditation.” or “Start a short meditation.”
Make your App Shortcuts even more discoverable
Although App Shortcuts don’t require a person to do any configuration in the Shortcuts app or by using the Add to Siri button, you may want to present elements in your app to tell people about an available App Shortcut. You have two options:
SiriTipView and SiriTipUIView present a view that tells a person that an App Shortcut is available.
ShortcutsLink enables you to display a link to your App Shortcut.
ShortcutsLink is especially convenient if your app displays a list of its available App Shortcuts.
Topics
App Shortcut management
App Shortcut definition
AppShortcutAppShortcutsContentAppShortcutPhraseAppShortcutPhraseTokenNegativeAppShortcutPhraseNegativeAppShortcutPhrasesNSAppIconActionTintColorNameNSAppIconComplementingColorNamesAppShortcutsBuilderShortcutTileColor
App Shortcut options
AppShortcutOptionsCollectionAppShortcutOptionsCollectionProtocolAppShortcutOptionsCollectionSpecificationAppShortcutOptionsCollectionSpecificationBuilder
App Shortcut parameter presentation
AppShortcutParameterPresentationAppShortcutParameterPresentationSummaryAppShortcutParameterPresentationSummaryStringAppShortcutParameterPresentationTitleAppShortcutParameterPresentationTitleString