Add Shortcuts to the iPad or iPhone Home Screen

0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can add shortcuts to our home screens on the iPad and iPhone. When we do this, it’s almost like we’re making an app out of our shortcut. Let’s see how we do this. Let’s go to my iPad and iPhone, we’re first going to look at this on the iPad. Now when we look at my iPad, here, you’re going to see I have an app called new note with date. This is actually a shortcut.

0:27
If I were to tap on this, what it would do is it would run the shortcut new note with date, it would open up a new note and add the date in there. So this is basically just a shortcut. But it behaves like an app, I can tap and hold on it. And then I can move it around, I can place it into different folders, I can place it into different screens, I want to delete it, I tap on the minus here. So it’s basically behaving just like an app. So how do I create these apps, and I’m going to call virtual apps out of a shortcut? Well, all we need to do is open up the shortcuts app. So I’m going to go to my shortcuts app here. And then what we need to do is we need to edit our shortcuts. So I’m going to go with directions to my next event, what I would like to do is add this to my home screen, so then all I have to do is just tap on it to open it up.

1:23
To do that, what we do is we tap on the three dots, we need to edit our shortcut. This is how we do it on the iPad and the iPhone. And then we go over to the right, and we go to these three horizontal lines here. This is where we can find our various settings. One of the settings that we have here is Add to Homescreen. All I have to do is just tap on this. And then from here, what I’m able to do is change the name, I could shorten it up. And if I wanted to change the icon, I can change it to a photo from my photos app, I’m going to leave it as is. So now all I need to do to add it to my home screen and make it a virtual app is just click on add up here. And when I do, it adds it to my home screen. From here, what I’m able to do is just tap on it to run that shortcut, or I can tap and hold, I can move it around. And if I want to delete it, I tap on the delete button here. Another way of deleting it is to just tap and hold on it.

2:28
And then you’re going to see delete bookmark. As I said, it is not really an app, I call it a virtual app. Basically what it is, it’s a bookmark to your shortcut in the shortcuts app. But other than that it works just like an app. That’s why I call it a virtual app, we can do the same thing on the iPhone. So I’m going to go over to my iPhone here. And we need to go open up our shortcuts app. So I’m going to go to my shortcuts app here. And let’s say I wanted to add that same shortcut to my home screen. Again, just like with the iPad, I go to the three dots here. And then we go over to these three lines here in the upper right hand corner. And from here, you’re going to see Add to Homescreen.

3:11
All I have to do is just click on this, I can go and change the name the icon just like I can with the iPad. When I’m finished, I tap on Add. And now what it did is it added that shortcut to my home screen, I can click and hold on it to drag it around, delete it, place it into different folders. And when I’m finished, I just click. And now there’s my new shortcut, my new virtual app. So if you have a shortcut that you need to access quite a bit, what you may want to do is make an app out of it a virtual app, then what you can do is you can place it on your front home screen or maybe even in your dock. It behaves just like any other app. The way that we do this is we edit our shortcut. We do it basically the same way on the iPad and iPhone, we added the shortcut, we go to where we can see all of our settings for that shortcut. And then you’re going to see Add to Homescreen. We can only do this on the iPad and iPhone. We cannot do this on the Mac. On the Mac. What we’re able to do is add it to our Menu Bar as well as our dock but I have a separate video on that. So that’s how we can add shortcuts to our home screens on the iPad and iPhone.