I have tried to find the official name of this functionality however could not.
Thanks
Home Screen Quick Actions
Home screen quick actions are a convenient way to perform useful, app-specific actions right from the Home screen. People can get a menu of available quick actions when they touch and hold an app icon (on a 3D Touch device, people can press briefly on the icon to see the menu).
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/system-capabilities/home-screen-actions/
Related
Could a button in an iOS app trigger a process to add a website shortcut to the device Home Screen?
For example company A releases an app through the App Store. This contains a button to add a shortcut to company A's website on the Home Screen of the phone or tablet.
Cheers.
I was looking to achieve something similar once & I am pretty sure it cannot be done -- iOS simply won't allow it.
You have 3 options for your button action --
Present UIActivityViewController with your website Url (it will the have option to "Add to Reading List", but it won't have "Add to Home Screen")
Present SFSafariViewController with the website Url, you can open an alert view to tell the user to add to bookmarks perhaps. (it will the have option to "Add to Reading List" & "Add to Bookmarks", but it won't have "Add to Home Screen")
Launch Safari & open the website with some parameter triggered javascript code to tell the user to select "Add to Home Screen".
None of them come close to what you want and are not particularly elegant. But I don't see any other way.
(In our case, we just went with launching the Safari)
Here's an old link I found, not much has changed --
iPhone SDK - Add a "Add to Home Screen" button in a UIWebView
Before anyone marks this question as a duplicate please read the extra section at the bottom that sites differences between this question and other similar questions out there
I'm utilizing Universal Links for my deep linking needs. Two example use cases are:
1.) Safari/Chrome Browser on iPhone with my app installed: When click on a link on my web site on their iPhone I'm deep linking them into my app if installed on their phone.
2.) With my app installed, running my app but using an in-app-UIWebView. My app also has an in-app UIWebView, when you tap a button it deep links them somewhere in the application.
After you deep link into the app, there are two buttons in the navigation bar. A Back button (top left) and a Forward button (top right).
My problem
If the user presses the forward button (top right) it forwards them to my web page and then will forever break my deep linking so that any time in the future when the user clicks on that link to deep link it always goes to my web page instead of deep linking into the app (which was the original intention). How can I prevent this? My concern here is that my app has close buttons in the top right corner and if the user is trying to hit hte close button they could accidentally hit the forward button and forever break deep linking. I've tried clearing my browsers caches, I've tried deleting and re-installing my app. But nothing will "fix" deep linking after it's been permanently disabled by the forward button. The only way I can get it working again is by doing a complete device reset and Erasing all Content and Settings.
Here is an image of the back and forward buttons after deep linking into the application.
Difference between my question and similar questions on SO:
Similar SO question But here they are saying that the user can long-press on the "universal link" and and action sheet pops up asking you to "open in ". I've tried this for above case 1.) and my app isn't showing up in the options. See attached screenshot below. And this doesn't work at all for above case 2.). How do you get a Universal link to work with an iOS WebViewController? Do I have to use the SafariViewController? I don't want to use SafariViewController in my app for this case because I don't want to have that top navigation bar that SafariViewController has.
You're absolutely right: the forward button is horrible UI/UX. It's one of the big flaws with Universal Links identified in this blog post. There is no way to disable the forward button, and once it's triggered, you're screwed.
The easiest way to re-enable Universal Linking behavior after it is turned off is to long-press on the link. But that doesn't work if your link is being disabled by the system based on some other criteria (more details below). Your best bet at getting a clean shot is to paste the Universal Link URL into the stock Notes app and try long-pressing it from there.
To answer a few of your other questions:
Universal Links do work within UIWebView (per Apple's docs). A SafariViewController is not necessary.
Universal Links are disabled at the system level in certain situations. There's a list here, but this the main one that comes to mind as potentially applicable in this situation:
Universal Links will not work with a user driven element click on the same domain. Example: if there is a Universal Link on google.com pointing to a different Universal Link on google.com, it will not open the app.
Your second example image is from Chrome. Universal Links should work (conditionally) in Chrome, but is the link pointing at the same domain as the page you've already loaded? If so, that's why you aren't seeing the Open in [app] option.
You cannot disable the button to open the website, but you can create a path in the other direction: Use a smart banner on the website, and when users tap "Open" (or the localized equivalent), they will be taken back to your app, and this will also reset the default to opening universal links in your app instead of Safari.
How can I lock the home button in iOS 7 ?
I have 10 text fields and a submit button in a view. While I'm filling the text fields, the home button should be disabled.
Only after filling all the text fields, should the home button be again enabled.
Please let me know anybody, how to achieve this.
Thanks in advance.
Disabling the Home button using your app is not possible but you can use Guided Access to block the Home button, but this is something the users will have to do. I don't think there's an API to do it within an app.
From Apple:
Guided Access helps students with disabilities such as autism remain
on task and focused on content. It allows a parent, teacher, or
administrator to limit an iOS device to one app by disabling the Home
button, as well as restrict touch input on certain areas of the
screen.
I'd like know if there's away to run a bit of code only after it's been installed to the home screen on iOS. This is for internal use only so I don't need it to work on other platforms. Just iOS.
Basically, I want to add a few custom icons to iOS devices that do specific things. One will open a PDF and that's the one I'm having a hard time working with.
So, here's the flow...
User goes to URL on their iOS based device, there is nothing to see here, but then they add the URL to their home screen. Once they click on the home screen icon, the page opens and redirects to the a PDF that lives online. The pdf can live online since they will always have wifi.
Any suggestions?
I'd like to password protect my ipad's home button... basically we have the ipad set up as a kiosk in our store and would like to prevent people from closing the browser by clicking the home button. Is it possible to do this?
I think your best bet is to physically hide the button from users, since you can't currently disable/password protect the home button.
If you have a ipad1 you can jailbreak it. Then install incarcerapp. When your in the application you want running you start it to disable the home button. It can be started in different ways like toggle the mute button off then on fast.
If you're up for jailbreaking, incarcer app seems like a great solution.
There's also a new hardware solution, adhesive-backed aluminum home button covers. They allow home button activation through a pinhole, using a paperclip (similar to many popular metal enclosures). BubCap Pro http://bubcap.com/bubcap-pro.html