Unlock Your Apps Faster: Direct Shortcut to iOS & iPadOS Settings!

October 30, 2025

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Are you finding it difficult to navigate through the hidden settings of your apps? Here’s a method to access them more quickly. This guide is based on the innovations introduced in iOS 18 and remains relevant up to iOS 26. The major enhancements include a more flexible Control Center that allows the addition of multiple actions, including the execution of shortcuts, and a completely restructured Settings app. The latter organizes the settings of all apps into a single lengthy list, which can be cumbersome to navigate. The goal is to streamline the process of accessing settings for the app that is currently open, using a shortcut from the Control Center. Here’s how it works.

Wondering how to set this up on your iPhone or iPad? Just follow these instructions!

Setting Up the Shortcut

First, you need a shortcut that fetches the name of the app currently in use and opens the appropriate settings page. A simple automation with just one action can do the job. Originally suggested by Quinn Nelson, this shortcut indeed involves only one key action: Open URL. Its purpose is to generate a specific link to the Settings app, which will then lead to the settings page of the app active at the moment the shortcut is executed.

Here’s how you can recreate the shortcut, and interestingly, we will use two actions; this actually simplifies the process due to multiple bugs in the Shortcuts app. Open the Shortcuts app, then create a new shortcut by tapping the + button at the top left of the library. You should see a search field at the bottom (on iPhone) or on the side (on iPad) that searches through a collection of actions. We’ll add two actions: “Get Current App” and “Open URL”. Type their names to find them in the extensive list and tap them to add them to your shortcut.

Creating a new shortcut on the left, searching for the correct action on the right. Image iGeneration.

Once you have both actions in place, only adjust the second one, the one with the URL. Clear the default content, then enter App-prefs:‌ into the text field. Do not add any space after it and use the bar just above the virtual keyboard (at the bottom of the screen on a tablet with a keyboard) to select the variable “Current App”. This should insert it right after your text, completing the setup.

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