How to have a custom URL for an icon on the iOS home screen

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kaeruranawa picture kaeruranawa · Apr 8, 2013 · Viewed 27.1k times · Source

Is it possible to make a custom URL for an icon on the iOS home screen? Or at least have a way for the user to edit the URL themselves?

UPDATE: To be more specific, here's what the client said:

"Because of our use of authentication, the URL of the landing page that [website] takes you to changes to a long URL with a session ID. Right now, when I use the Add to Home Screen function, it associates the icon with the long URL which, because of the session ID, won't work after a couple of days. Is there any way to change the URL to [website] (our stable and persistent URL) after or before the Add to home screen function is invoked"

Also, the website isn't a web app, so I'm not sure if web app things would apply here.....?

Answer

bcampolo picture bcampolo · Dec 5, 2015

I just tried this on the iPhone 6.

  1. Go to Settings and turn Airplane Mode to ON
  2. Go to Safari and type in the address you want to have an icon for
  3. Click Go. The page will fail to load, but the address will stay the same.
  4. Click the AirDrop icon next to the URL entry bar (landscape mode) and click the + button.
  5. Change the name of the site to whatever you want the icon caption to be
  6. Go to Settings and turn Airplane Mode to OFF

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