Applr IOS 14 and Shortcuts/Siri

Feature Requests
#1

Hello! Long time lurker and I have been using/loving the home remote for a long time now.

I just wanted to put this feature forward. Adding IOS shortcuts compatibility would be brilliant. Now that they have added widgets to iOS14, you can place those shortcuts on your front screen.

You would also be able to use siri to activate those shortcuts - which would be an added benefit.

I’m not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but I suspect it’s very reasonable regarding time/effort. On top of this, this could potentially be added as a feature for the “pro” expansion to the iOS app? That way you can charge a membership to recuperate some money for the exorbitant time you must have spent building this up.

#2

Glad you enjoy it!

The PRO version actually already supports iOS shortcuts but they aren’t the same kind you are requesting. I like your proposed shortcuts better!

Apple has 2 different kinds of shortcuts they provide:

  1. Home Screen Quick Actions (UIApplicationShortcutItem)
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicationshortcutitem
    https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/system-capabilities/home-screen-actions/

  2. Siri Shortcuts (INVoiceShortcut)
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/invoiceshortcut
    https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/siri/overview/shortcuts-and-suggestions/

The PRO version currently allows you to create the 1st kind of shortcuts (UIApplicationShortcutItem) with the Designer. The problem with those is that they only work on devices with 3D Touch. To this day, I don’t think any iPads support 3D Touch so you can really only use this feature on iPhones.

Your proposal would be to use a combination of INVoiceShortcut with a Widget. This would expand support to any Apple device with iOS 14 which is certainly a plus.

I have attached a shortcut demo for anyone that wants to experiment with Shortcuts as they currently are today.
ShortcutsExample.hrp (9.0 KB)

There hasn’t been much work done on the Home Remote’s Shortcut feature in a while. There are several known issues:

  1. They require PNG images. They don’t work with the Home Remote’s new built-in icons.
  2. They can’t navigate to Group pages or MainPage.xaml
  3. They can open template pages but there’s no way to set the @Device parameter.

image
image1883×1641 184 KB

Screenshot_20200926-101439_One UI Home
Screenshot_20200926-101439_One UI Home1080×2220 161 KB

#3

Im late to this one. I guess there are multiple shortcuts.

Can home remote expose any buttons so you can call them directly from the apple shortcuts app. Currently the app does not show up directly from the list of apps on my phone that are supported, thus I can’t select it and do actions- like push a button, in the app.

Anything I’m missing on how to make that work?

Cause if you can, that makes any command you want voice programmable….

Thanks,

Reed

#4

Hi @bill, could you explain where to find the shortcuts that are made. I can’t for the life of me find them. I created 2 of them in the designer and tested out the url with Safari and they work fine saved the project loaded it on the app but can’t find them. I’m using an iPhone 13 with iOS 15.5. I also down loaded the above demo it does the same thing. Now I did try it on the windows 10 app and it had a add shortcuts in the settings which I tried and it pined it to the start page in windows, but the iPhone app does not have that?

Dan

#5

They are on the Settings page in the app. Once created, they should be added to the Quick Actions menu. iOS treats shortcuts differently than the other platforms. Even the terminology is a bit confusing. Apple used to call them shortcuts but now it seems to be calling them Quick Actions. In the code when developing an app, they are still labeled shortcuts (i.e. UIApplicationShortcutItem)

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/menus_and_shortcuts/add_home_screen_quick_actions

#6

Good morning @bill, thank you for getting back to me, so much appreciated. I ran your project again and also review the Apple info to make sure I had everything setup correctly. I went to the iPhone app version 4.4.6 settings page and there is nothing there but (Devices, Groups, mode, scale , backup/restore and projects) but no shortcuts

Dan

#7

The app is checking if your device supports 3D touch. If I recall correctly, those Quick Action Shortcuts require 3D touch. I believe 3D touch is only available on newer iPhones. I don’t think any iPads support 3D touch.

Or, you said this is on an iPhone 13. That should definitely support it. I have an iPhone 13 mini. I’ll take a look at it when I have the chance. I may even just remove that check entirely in the next release.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitraitcollection/1623515-forcetouchcapability

#8

The iOS docs still say these shortcutItems are only available on 3D touch devices.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplication/1623033-shortcutitems

#9

Morning all, I found this article regarding 3D Touch and Haptic Touch what it says is that 3D Touch is out and replaced with Haptic Touch. The article: Force Touch - Wikipedia

Dan