I'm running iOS 13 WWDC beta on my iPhone XS Max.

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I know we're all excited about the possibility of running background NFC tags to perform actions.

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The good news: It will work in future betas

The bad news: It sporadically works in this beta, and sometimes fails to see the tag, and sometimes it really works, then requires you to reset the automation to the tag. It's a bug.

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I've been testing how tags need to be encoded using my mac and the NFC Ideas desktop app to encode and write to tags. If you want to have an NFC tag launch an app with a URL scheme you'd need to encode tags with shortcuts://link-to-shortcut. Same sort of URL scheme used by launcher to perform actions with tags.

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The problem with needing to encode tags with a URL, is they aren't dynamic and you'd have to link to the exact shortcut name.

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Good News! Shortcuts app no longer requires any URI to be written on the tag. Just a blank, NDEF formatted tags will work fine. This means you can choose any tag, and it will be unique to that shortcut action. It will launch in the background, even when your phone is locked if you choose. I had it working, but it has a bug, and stops after a bit.

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It won't let you use a tag that already has something written to it as far as I can tell. But this might be a bug. I've had to restart my phone a few times to get the Shortcuts to even let me select the tag for the automation. It does work to reuse a tag that I wrote Plaintext "r/shortcuts" too. Obviously it won't let you take over tags that our routed to other apps like "launchbar://"

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It was awesome! I routed music to my office sonos speakers, and instantly set playlist to start playing when I tapped the tag on my desk. It's just super buggy right now. So don't get discouraged if you cant' get it working.

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The big takeaway is you won't need specially encoded tags :-) And when it works, it works instantly without any popups. The audio starts playing on my sonos speakers in the office instantly as if I turned on a light switch!

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After another 1.5 hours now it seems to only see tags that have anything written on them. Earlier it worked with completely empty, and formatted tags. Super frustrating. Top tag works, bottom one without "r/shortcuts" encoded won't register anymore. But if I format it and write the same data it works.

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I think it's just super buggy right now. Even the UI to select songs in Shortcuts, breaks a lot so it's not just NFC stuff.

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https://preview.redd.it/93gadpi3qo231.png?width=1042&format=png&auto=webp&s=7233e1b4e13acd03a4cc233049e285ce17aad0c8