Use a Shortcut To Change iPhone Settings Just For One App

You can create a personal automation in the Shortcuts app to change your iPhone settings when you launch an app, and then change them back when you exit. For example, you can increase the font size, but only for that app or a set of apps.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how you can use a personal automation shortcut to get settings in your iPhone to change but only when you're in one app.
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Now suppose there's an app on your iPhone that you have trouble using unless you adjust some settings. Like maybe making the contrast greater or changing the font size. But you don't want to change this for your entire iPhone. You just want this one app to behave differently. Well, you can use a shortcuts app to create a personal automation that will change a setting on your iPhone whenever you launch an app and change it back when you leave the app. So as an example let's look at the Calendar app. If you go into the Calendar app you may think the fonts are too small on your iPhone and you would like to make them bigger. You could do this by going to the Settings app and in there go to Accessibility and then under Vision go to Display & Text Size. Here you can turn on Larger Text and you could see it's increased here in the Settings app. Then when you go to the Calendar app you could see everything looks a lot bigger. But now all the fonts and all sorts of different apps are bigger. 
Let's say you just want to do it for the Calendar app.  So let's switch it back to the normal size. Let's go into the Shortcuts app. Here I'm going to click on Automations at the bottom. I'm going to create a personal automation. Now I'm going to set this personal automation to be triggered whenever an app is opened. So let's choose the app. I can choose from all the apps I have installed. In this case we'll choose Calendar.  We're going to set it to Is Opened. Then next we're going to choose the Actions. So I'm going to Add an Action here and now I can search for different actions. So let's search for the Text Size change there in Settings. You can see here if I look through when I search for Text with the Settings icon next to it Set Text Size. I'll select that. It's set to Set Text Size to extra small. That's not what we want. We want to go and make it Extra Extra Extra Large. So that's the top setting there. Now we're going to do Next and you could see here it's set to When, Calendar is opened. Do, Set Text Size. Ask Before Running - No. We don't want it to ask. We just want it to do it automatically.
So let's test this out. I'll tap Done there. Let's go Home. Now you could see the text is normal size. But when I go into the Calendar app it changes it. It's automatically to the larger size.  The problem is when I go back Home it's still set to the larger size. So let's go in and add another shortcut. So in the Shortcuts app here I'll add another personal automation and I'm going to set this also for App. Choose the app and I'm going to choose Calendar again. But this time When, Is Closed and turn off is opened. Here I'll add an action. I'll search for that same thing. So that way Set, text and you could see it appears right there, and I can go in and have it go to Default. So now when the Calendar is closed it will set the text size back to default. I can turn off Ask before running. Done. So now I have two things here. When Calendar is closed it's going to set the text size to default. When Calendar is opened it sets it to that extra extra extra Large. 
So let's go back into Calendar now. Everything is still large text size from when we had it set before. So I go into Calendar but this time when I leave Calendar it's going to set everything back. You could see it jump there at the last second. So now every time we go into the Calendar app everything gets big and every time we go back everything gets small again. That's not all we can do. We can do a lot more. If we go into the Shortcuts app here I can go back in to When Calendar is opened here and I can add more things here to do. So I can use Plus here and, for instance, I can search for Contrast and you could see Set Increased Contrast. So some apps look better with increased contrast. You can have that automatically happen. I could also invert the colors if I want. I could go and Search for Colors and instead of Classic Invert I'm going to do Set Smart Invert. So it won't invert photos and things. So this is going to set the text size to really big and turn on Smart Invert. Now I'll go back here, Done. I'll change the When Closed to Add the same thing except turning off Smart Invert. So I'll switch the to Off. So now you could see When, Calendar is Closed text size and set at smart invert and the same thing when it's opened. Now let's test this out. If I go into the Calendar app there it goes. Text set large and it inverts. When I exit the Calendar app everything goes back to normal. 
Plus you don't have to do this for each individual app. If you like these settings and you want to have it for several apps you could go in here and notice under When, when calendar is opened, I can go back in here. Under app I can tap there and I can add another app. Let's say we'll also have that happen in the Contacts app. I'll add it to the Contacts app there and now it says Any of Two Apps. I'll do the same thing for When, Is Opened I'll change from Calendar to also add Contacts. Now the same thing will happen when we launch the Contacts app. You could see text gets bigger. It inverts. But when I go back Home you can see everything sets back. So you can continue to go in here and add new apps to this list, add new Actions to be performed under Do, or add a new pair of Actions and have it do different things. Like maybe increase the contrast but when other apps are run. 
I tried this out on a couple different iPhones and one of the things I did notice was that it works much better on newer iPhones. On my iPhone 11 ProMax  for instance it kind of happens instantly. Whereas an iPhone a couple of years older than that you can see how it took a second for it to make all those adjustments. So try this out. Play around with it. The shortcut is basically exactly the same as you going into settings manually and changing these settings. There's no magic to it. So it's easy to play around with it. If you make a mistake it's easy to go into Settings and change those things back to be exactly as you want them.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Use a Shortcut To Change iPhone Settings Just For One App”

Jerry Raphael

4 months ago

can this be used to prevent screen rotation on certain apps?

Gary Rosenzweig

Jerry: Yes.

Alfred Priest

2 months ago

I have an app that I do not want to let it access WiFi. I made an automation to turn off WiFi when the app is clicked and turn WiFi back on when the app is closed. It works but opens the app before it turns off WiFi so the app accesses the WiFi. Is there any way to turn off WiFi before it turns the app on?

Alfred: Why not create a Shortcut that turns off Wi-Fi, then waits for a few seconds, then launches the app.

philippe de Mazieres

1 month ago

Is it possible to create an automated short cut to run for example every 22 of the month to reset data usage statistics?

philippe: On the iPhone? No. Set a reminder or calendar event and then do it manually on that day.

Use a Shortcut To Change iPhone Settings Just For One App

Comments: 6 Responses to “Use a Shortcut To Change iPhone Settings Just For One App”

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