Posted on December 1, 2021, 1:29 PM
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If you need to physically hand over your iPhone to present a COVID-19 vaccination certificate, here's how to do it quickly and as securely as possible.
If you are entering a place with a large number of people, such as a stadium or a bar, chances are you are familiar with the procedure for presenting a COVID certificate. This is usually a venue representative scanning a QR code on your iPhone to confirm it's safe to enter.
As systems were put in place to enable these checks with a verifiable certificate in an official app, the situation slowly evolved to become more user-friendly. Many of these apps offer the ability to view the certificate in Apple Wallet, making it easy to access with the press of a few buttons.
Not all apps offer the ability to use Wallet, which requires you to unlock your iPhone and manually open the app.
This can pose a security concern for iPhone users, as you are effectively placing the device in an unlocked and publicly visible state. Plus, you're potentially handing it over to someone.
A shortcut solution
One of the ways to improve the situation is to use a method described on Twitter by @DLX, namely to create a custom shortcut in iOS to perform several actions in quick succession. See article: ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition announced. Specifically, three elements occur within the shortcut itself.
First, the iPhone screen brightness is increased to 100%. Since a QR code needs to be displayed on the screen, you'll want it to be well lit to be easier to read.
Related to this article: Rhythm Bot Discord: YouTube has killed Discord's most popular music bot.The second task it performs is to open the application that contains the certificate itself. While Shortcuts can't necessarily access the part of the app that displays the code to scan, opening the app does make things a bit easier.
Adjusting the maximum screen brightness in Shortcuts
The third element, once the application is open, is to activate Guided Access in Shortcuts. This temporarily locks your iPhone so that only the app containing the certificate that is displayed can be viewed, preventing anyone from navigating out of the app.
Although working with shortcuts can be daunting for people who are unfamiliar with automation, the method for creating this particular shortcut is quite simple, as it consists of only three main components.
How do you create a shortcut in iOS to view your COVID certificate and lock it with Guided Access?
When you trigger the shortcut, it brightens the screen, opens the app, and activates Guided Access. You may be asked for an access code that will be needed to exit Guided Access. Also read: Hotspot Shield Free VPN: Is there a free trial and how do I get it?
Configure the shortcut to open a specific application.
At this point, you can hand the iPhone over to someone else to scan the certificate. This person will only be able to use the selected application and will not be able to leave Guided Access without the access code.
To exit Guided Access, press the power button three times, then enter your passcode.
Guided Access can prevent others from snooping outside the app.
Shortcut trigger
All that remains is to create a way to run the shortcut. See also: Facebook is back online after a massive outage that also affected Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. After creating the shortcut, you can still run it by opening the Shortcuts app and selecting it, but you can implement simpler ways.
Related to this article:iPhone 13 review: Should you upgrade to iPhone 13? We compared the last five iPhones to find out.When done, the shortcut should look like this.
To get started, you can ask Siri to use it by saying "Hey Siri, [Shortcut name]" out loud. It's easy, but you might not want to do it in a populated space.
A second option is to add it to your home screen as a dedicated icon.
How to add a shortcut to the iOS home screen?
A third option, suggested by @DLX, is to take advantage of iOS's Back Tap feature. By double or triple tapping, you can call up the shortcut quickly, without having to navigate the home screen.