Nov 1, 2018
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Apple Shortcut Deep Linking for Developers
Do you know you can use other apps’ Siri shortcuts in your app?
Apple opened SiriKit intents for limited domains based on the type of apps like Messaging, Lists and Notes, Workouts, Payments, VoIP Calling, Visual Codes, Photos, Ride Booking, Car Commands, CarPlay and Restaurant Reservations.
Apple introduced Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 feature. Siri Shortcuts is breakthrough of SiriKit limitation. Now you can ask or can train Siri to perform your workflows.
We’ve all seen how to create workflows and also we can make our custom workflow from application as well, but most of us don’t know that we can deeplink in shortcut as well. Shortcut allows us to open or run shortcut, open gallery and search for specific kind of shortcut as well.
The URL Scheme for the Shortcut app is shortcuts: //
Deeplinking parameters
name — Name of the shortcut.
input — Input is the string input to the shortcut which you are going to run.
These are basic parameter which allow you to open or run any shortcut. Lets see how we can open or run any shortcut.
Open (not run) a specific shortcut
shortcuts://open-shortcut?name=[name]
Running a specific Shortcut
shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=[name]&input=[input]
Simple right?? But How can we know is shortcut run successfully or not. Well apple also provided this feature as well.
x-callback-url — Callback url is responsible for sending response back after excusion of shortcut.
shortcuts://x-callback-url/run-shortcut?name=[name]&x-success=[url]
Callback URL work with 3 parameters:
x-success — To handle Successful execution
x-cancel — To handle interruptions in execution
x-error — To handle errors in execution
You can specify your application URL Scheme to open app once shortcut execution completed
shortcuts://x-callback-url/run-shortcut?name=Make%20PDF&x-success=sampleapp://status=0
Note: URL should be URL-encoded and Shortcut should be added to the library.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c5e23f99886c42d7be3883bd5df8a973
Here is simple Bluetooth TurnOn shortcut file. Add this to library of your shortcut app.
Below is sample code to run shortcut and on success it will trigger ‘shortcutDemo://status=1’ (URL Scheme: shortcutDemo).
Shortcut links
Import a Shortcut
shortcuts://import-shortcut?url=[url]&name=[name]
url — URL for a. shortcut file
name — Name of the shortcut
You can &silent=true in url for importing shortcut in library without opening Shortcut app.
Open the Shortcuts Gallery
shortcuts://gallery
Search the Shortcuts Gallery
shortcuts://gallery/search?query=[query]
Conclusion
You make any workflow related to your application and make SiriKit work for you OR you can call another application shortcut from your application.
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