UIImage from UIApplicationShortcutIcon

Question

At https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/graphics/system-icons/ there are some great “quick steps.”

Is it possible to make UIImage from one of these UIApplicationShortcutIcon to use, say, a UIButton . For example, the mail icon:

 let mailIcon = UIApplicationShortcutIcon(type: .mail) let mailImage = UIImage( ... ) 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

You cannot use Quick Action Icons as a regular image, or you cannot set a button image. This is only for hotkeys for 3D touch. When you click on the application icon and displays a context menu for quick action. You can use these icons here. Even this allows us to use our images as shortcuts.

You can also link to URLs as a link:

• How to add custom images as UIApplicationShortcutIcon for UIApplicationShortcutItem?
• UIApplicationShortcutItem - Can I use an image downloaded from the Internet like UIApplicationShortcutIcon?
• https://developer.apple.com/reference/uikit/uiapplicationshortcuticon

Answer 2

These images are not available using the regular API, but they are part of the UIKit package. You can use a tool like iOS-Artwork-Extractor to extract 1x, 2x and 3x variants of these images, and then you can add them to your project.