There's so much we can do with our iPhone that we might sometimes forget it's actually a phone. A phone that we can set up to easily make calls to our favorite contacts.
A call with just one tap
Adding a specific icon to make a phone call from the home screen is really interesting. Whether it's for someone we call several times a day or to make it easier for an elderly person or a child, this shortcut is always useful. To add it, we'll use the Shortcuts app, which we've introduced before. The steps are as follows:
- We open the Shortcuts app on our iPhone.
- We tap the "+" button at the top.
- In the search bar at the bottom, we type "Call."
- We choose Call.
- We tap on Contact and select the person we want to call when tapping the button.
- At the top, we tap just to the right of the icon to set the shortcut's name, for example, "Call Mom."
- We tap the blue settings button.
- We select Add to Home Screen.
- In the lower-left corner, we tap the icon and choose Select Photo to pick one from our photo library.
- We enlarge and crop the image to center it and tap Use.
- We tap Add.
We'll see that the Shortcuts app exits and takes us to the home screen, where a new icon with the photo we just chose and the name we've given it appears, ready to start a call with the selected person.
With this simple method, we can place one or several shortcuts to communicate very easily with the people we consider important. Unlike widgets, this system allows for total customization of the icon, photo, and name, and it also takes up much less space on our home screen.
This is just one of many examples, like receiving an alert when our iPhone is fully charged, where the Shortcuts app stands out by allowing us to do something the system doesn't inherently offer. In this case, it facilitates, for ourselves as well as for an elderly family member or the youngest ones in the house, the ability to make a call with just one tap.
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