One Click Access to Your Proof of Vaccine Card on your iPhone

I saw this shortcut on the internet and thought it might be useful. This may be specific to Canada. I am not sure how vaccination cards are handled in other countries, but here, you can get your Proof of Vaccination simply by going to the Federal government web site. From that web site, you will find sub-links to the different provincial health ministry web sites. On the provincial web site, you can get your card by entering your provincial health insurance number, your birthdate and the date of one of your vaccinations. The card usually comes in the form of a PNG or PDF file with a QR Code in it.

I had tried saving the Vaccine Card file as my home screen background, but it was

• a) ugly
• b) made the screen hard to read and
• c) got cluttered if I added new apps.

This Shortcut method gives a one-click method of displaying your Vaccine proof card if you want to go to a restaurant or recreation activity, etc.

What it looks like is an icon on your Home Screen that allows you to tap once and display the PDF or PNG file on your phone until you click the ‘Done’ button at the top right.

To get it to work, 

1. If you don’t have the Shortcuts app installed, download it from the App Store on your phone
2. Save your Vaccine card (It might be a .png or a .pdf) file to your Shortcuts folder in iCloud
   1. if there is no Shortcuts folder already, create one.
3. Note the name of the file to use in the Shortcut 
4. Create a two-step Shortcut referencing the file
   1. Get File From – enter the file name – It can only be in from Shortcuts folder because of iOS sandboxing.
   2. Show File in Quicklook
   3. For more about creating custom Shortcuts.
5. Give the Shortcut a colour and icon 
6. Add this shortcut as an app icon to your Home Screen.
7. I made two copies of this Shortcut, one for the Provincial Card and one for the Federal Card.
8. Consider naming your Shortcut “Show Vaccine Card”, so you can say “hey Siri, show vaccine card”. Amazingly, these just work, Siri picks up on your named Shortcuts.
9. Congratulate yourself, if you weren’t already, you are now a programmer!

Adding the Shortcut to your home screen.

What it looks like when you launch the Shortcut. The Done button allows you to keep it on screen until you are ready to close it.

My two Shortcuts. The first one is for Provincial and the second for Federal.