Using Keyboard hotkeys to Launch Apps on iPad

By Maldalain, 2 February, 2021

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hey all
Is there a way that enables me to launch apps using keyboard hotkeys? I use a bluetooth keyboard so I wish there is a way to launch certain apps using my keyboard without having to navigate to where the app is. Thanks for any suggestions

Options

Comments

By Yvonnezed on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - 05:58

I've got a couple of ideas for this. The first one is, use spotlight. In other words, hit command space, type the first few letters of what you're trying to launch. I usually get what I'm looking for after two or three letters, but you can use the arrows if you don't.

Anyway, wait until the app you want is the search result and hit enter.

If you do this a lot, and use the same letters to launch the app every time this should work for you. I launch almost everything this way, even when I *don't* have a keyboard, since I created a Voiceover command to launch spotlight from anywhere.

The second suggestion is to create a Shortcut to run the app, and then go into Voiceover commands and assign a key combination to that shortcut.

Now this has been unreliable in the past, although I do remember getting this to work under 14.3, so it's worth a try. I'd probably go the Spotlight route, though, to save having to create a shortcut for every app you want to launch.

Hope this helps.

By Justin Harris on Saturday, December 24, 2022 - 05:58

I would love to see the Mac Voiceover keyboard commander make it to the iPad. With this, it would be so incredibly easy! Thanks for the idea on using spotlight.