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Apple released the second iOS 14.3 developer beta yesterday and includes a major change to shortcuts. With iOS 14.3 beta 2, the Shortcuts app no longer opens when you launch a shortcut from the home screen, which in turn has significant benefits for those who use the Shortcuts app to configure custom app icons.
Along with the release of iOS 14 in September, the ability to set custom app icons using the Shortcuts app went viral. IPhone users were in love with support for home screen widgets in iOS 14, and they quickly turned to the Shortcuts app as a way to further customize their home screen aesthetics with custom icons.
However, the downside to using Shortcuts to set a custom icon is that the Shortcuts app launches every time you tap the custom icon from the home screen. This is because you are essentially creating a shortcut whose only action is to open another app and use the custom icon for that shortcut on the home screen.
In iOS 14.3 beta 2, however, the Shortcuts app no longer opens when you launch a shortcut from the home screen. This means that you can set custom app icons on your home screen and launch the associated app, without the Shortcuts app starting automatically first. Instead, a compact UI banner appears at the top.
This change was first noticed by users on Reddit and collected by Apple terminal.
Here’s how it works to set custom app icons:
- Open the Shortcuts app
- Tap the “+” button to create a new shortcut
- Tap “Add Action”
- Find “Open application” and find it in the Actions list
- Touch “Choose” and choose which application you want to customize.
- Tap on the three dots icon in the upper right corner
- Tap “Add to Home Screen”
- Name the shortcut the name of the application
- Tap the icon to the left of the app name and choose your custom icon in the Photos app
Of course, this has many other benefits besides setting app icons. With iOS 14.3 beta, the Shortcuts app will no longer open when launching a shortcut of any kind from the home screen. Hopefully, this is a change that remains for the rest of the iOS 14.3 beta testing period and until the final release.
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