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If you have to physically hand over your iPhone to present a COVID-19 vaccination certificate, here’s how to do so quickly in the most secure way possible.
If you’re entering a venue with a large number of people, such as a stadium or a bar, there’s a good chance you will be familiar with the process of showing a COVID certificate. This typically involves a representative for a venue scanning a QR code on your iPhone, to confirm it is safe to let you in.
As systems have rolled out to enable these checks to occur with a verifiable certificate within an official app, the situation has slowly evolved to become more user-friendly. Many of these apps offer the ability to display the certificate within the Apple Wallet, making it just a few button presses away and easy to access.
Not all apps provide the option to use Wallet, which leaves you having to unlock your iPhone and to manually open the app.
This can be a security problem for iPhone users, as you’re effectively placing the device in an unlocked condition and visible in public. And, you’re potentially handing it over to somebody.
A Shortcut Solution
One way to make the situation better is by a method outlined on Twitter by @DLX, namely creating a custom Shortcut in iOS to perform multiple actions in quick succession. Specifically, there are three elements happening in the Shortcut itself.
First, the iPhone display brightness is raised to 100%. Since a QR code is to be shown on the display, you will want this to be nice and bright so it is more easily readable.
The second task it performs is to open up the app that holds the certificate itself. While Shortcuts can’t necessarily get to the bit of the app that actually displays the scannable code, the opening of the app goes some way to make things easier.
Setting the maximum display brightness in Shortcuts
The third element, once the app is open, is for Shortcuts to enable Guided Access. This temporarily locks down your iPhone so that only the currently-displayed app containing the certificate can be viewed, by preventing anyone from navigating away from the app.
While meddling with Shortcuts may be intimidating to people unfamiliar with automation, the method to create this particular shortcut is quite straightforward, as …….
