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Sick of tappity-tapping around the settings screens of your iPhone just to do a simple thing like turning off Bluetooth? Me too. Thankfully, there's an app for that. Icon Project lets you create home-screen shortcuts to quickly send mail, call and text single contacts.
Icon Project doesn't do anything under the hood. It just associates URLs with the buttons. IOS uses URL schemes communicate between apps. If you ever saw the YouTube or App Store apps launch automatically, you have seen URL schemes in action.
The app takes a simple task and -- through the magic of bad UI design -- makes it very hard to do. Essentially it lets you pick an contact, design the icon and then create a URL which opens in Safari. From there, you add it to the home screen and it becomes a standalone button.
That's fine and all, but thanks to some little-known tricks, you can hack the app to take you straight to various places in the Settings app. It turns out that there are URLs for all these pages, and just adding them takes you there at the tap of an icons. Brightness, Bluetooth, Notifications and pretty much everything else can be gotten to quickly.
The iDownload blog lists all of the URLs you can use. Here are a few to try:
You don't really need to use the $1 Icon Project to roll these shortcuts, but it's a lot easier than doing it the manual way from Safari, and it lets you add nice icons. The app can also be used on the iPad, in pixel-doubled mode. Available now.
Icon Project product page [iTunes]
How to Create Custom Shortcuts For WiFi Settings, Airplane Mode, and More – No Jailbreak Required [iDownload Blog]
Want Settings Toggles on Your iPhone's Homescreen Without Jailbreaking? [iPhoneaddict]
