Creating Shortcuts with App Intents

Including shortcuts help might be an effective way to distinguish your app and supply glorious integration into the iOS ecosystem. Shortcuts permit your customers to work together together with your app with out launching and navigating into particular screens to carry out duties. Shortcuts can use voice, textual content or Highlight to perform fast duties with out a lot psychological overhead. Your customers can even construct bigger workflows together with your shortcuts to perform many duties concurrently.

Previously, including Shortcuts and exposing them to the system may very well be cumbersome and time-consuming. After your shortcut was arrange and out there, you had to determine one of the best ways to tell the person that it existed and present learn how to use it. In iOS 16, Apple revamped the method of including and exposing your app’s Shortcuts to iOS. The previous strategy of including Shortcuts included finicky visible editors and mapping code recordsdata to Intent Definition recordsdata.

The brand new App Intents framework enables you to create shortcuts from the identical language you utilize day by day – Swift! Every little thing is statically typed and ingested into iOS upon set up. Your shortcuts are instantly out there to customers through Siri, the Shortcuts app and Highlight.

It’s time to dive into this new easy method so as to add Shortcuts to the system!

Getting Began

Obtain the starter challenge by clicking the Obtain Supplies button on the high or backside of the tutorial.

The BreakLogger app permits you to file break instances all through the day. Open the starter app challenge. Construct and run BreakLogger. You’ll see an empty break listing:

Faucet the Add button on the backside of the display, and also you’ll be prompted to file a break:

Choose a break so as to add. Subsequent, you’ll see a listing of the breaks you’ve added — together with the one you simply recorded:

Proper now, the one technique to log a break is from inside the app. However iOS has a number of different methods to work together with apps all through its ecosystem. Customers could wish to log a break as half of a bigger workflow, combining a number of actions into one shortcut. They might additionally wish to inform Siri to log a break with out opening the app whereas on the go. These use instances are attainable for those who combine the App Intents framework into your app.

iOS 16 launched the App Intents framework. Shortcut definitions at the moment are constructed solely in Swift, with no code technology or further steps wanted to make them out there throughout iOS. You now not want to make use of Intent Definition recordsdata or the visible editors. Get began constructing your personal together with your first App Intent.

Defining Your First App Intent

Contained in the starter challenge, right-click the Supply group and choose New Group. Identify the group Intents. Inside the brand new group, right-click once more and choose New File… . Choose the Swift File template and select Subsequent. Identify the file LogBreakIntent.swift.

Create a LogBreakIntent struct that conforms to AppIntent:

import AppIntents
import SwiftUI

// 1
struct LogBreakIntent: AppIntent {
  // 2
  static let title: LocalizedStringResource = "Log a Break"

  // 3
  func carry out() async throws -> some IntentResult & ProvidesDialog {
    // 4
    let loggerManager = LoggerManager()
    loggerManager.logBreak(for: .quarterHour)
    // 5
    return .outcome(dialog: "Logged a 15 minute break")
  }
}

Right here’s what’s occurring within the code above:

1. Creates a struct to signify your shortcut. Provides conformance to the AppIntent protocol.
2. Provides a title property. That is of kind LocalizedStringResource, which makes the string out there out of course of for localization lookup. Bear in mind this code additionally runs when your app isn’t in reminiscence.
3. Provides a carry out() operate to finalize conformance to the AppIntent protocol. Signifies it returns an IntentResult and that it gives a dialog.
4. Makes use of the LoggerManager comfort kind to log a 15-minute break. This motion additionally saves the break to the Core Information retailer.
5. Returns the IntentResult as a dialog.

With the present setup, a person can create a shortcut and the intents from BreakLogger will seem as out there actions. These actions run by themselves or as half of a bigger shortcut composed of many actions. As quickly as a person installs BreakLogger your intents can be found as shortcut actions.

Construct and run to make sure the up to date code installs to the simulator. Subsequent, background the app with the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + H. You’ll see the Shortcuts app on the identical display. Open Shortcuts.

Faucet the + button on the highest proper. The New Shortcut view hundreds.

On the New Shortcut view, faucet Add Motion. Within the segmented management on the high, choose Apps.

Choose BreakLogger from the listing, then faucet Log a Break.

Faucet Achieved. The view dismisses and takes you again to the Shortcuts tab within the app. You’ll see your new shortcut on the display now. You’ve created a shortcut together with your first app intent!

Faucet the Log a Break shortcut to run it. You’ll see a dialog drop down after a second or two with the content material you arrange within the carry out() operate.

Faucet Achieved, shut Shortcuts and open BreakLogger once more. You’ll see the break you simply logged added to the listing.

Properly accomplished! You added Shortcuts integration into your app with a number of Swift recordsdata in a number of steps. Subsequent, you’ll add an app shortcut to BreakLogger.

Including an App Shortcut

Again in Xcode, add a brand new Swift file to the Intents group you created earlier. Identify the file BreakLoggerShortcuts.swift.

Add the next:

import AppIntents

// 1
struct BreakLoggerShortcuts: AppShortcutsProvider {
  // 2
  static var appShortcuts: [AppShortcut] {
	// 3
    AppShortcut(
      // 4
      intent: LogBreakIntent(),
      // 5
      phrases: [
        "Log a break",
        "Log a (.applicationName) break"
      ]
    )
  }
}

Right here’s what this code does:

1. Creates a struct that conforms to AppShortcutsProvider. This lets iOS know to index the shortcuts right here.
2. Provides a static property that returns an array of AppShortcut cases. For this instance, you’ll solely be offering one.
3. Creates an AppShortcut.
4. Makes use of LogBreakIntent because the intent behind the shortcut.
5. Gives a listing of phrases that may set off this shortcut. Observe using the particular token .applicationName, which resolves to the localized identify of your app.

Now, construct and run.

Background the app. You’ll be capable of begin Siri on the simulator and say, “Use BreakLogger to a break” and have the shortcut run instantly.

You’ll see a immediate asking you to allow BreakLogger shortcuts with Siri:

Then, you’ll see a affirmation dialog:

Lastly, open BreakLogger once more. You’ll see your second logged break from the shortcut you simply ran.

Observe: Siri might be finicky on the simulator. You might have to reset the system and take a look at a number of instances to get the shortcut to run through voice. Additionally, make sure there isn’t quite a lot of background noise within the room you’re working in.

Subsequent, you’ll create a customized affirmation view to point out every time the intent has run.