How can I implement the new iPad Pro keyboard shortcut feature?

Question

The Apple iPad Pro page talks about the new keyboard shortcut feature:

Shortcuts at your fingertips.

iOS 9 works seamlessly with a smart keyboard, adding many useful QuickType features to your iPad Pro.

Time-saving shortcuts

Use keyboard shortcuts to perform even more commands on your iPad Pro - for example, switching between applications or searching using the smart keyboard. And interact with your applications using your own built-in custom shortcuts. Just press and hold a key, such as Command, Option or Control, to see shortcuts in any application.

I tried to find iOS 9 and iOS 9.1 API Pages and cannot find anything about keyboard shortcuts.

How can I implement this feature in my application or where can I find documentation that talks about this?

Answer 1

It looks like most of this feature already existed with iOS 7 called UIKeyCommand .

The only thing that was added is a discoverabilityTitle , which is used to display the available command names on any iPad running iOS 9+, you can see this menu in the simulator by holding down the command key on any screen that contains keyboard shortcuts (for example, the home screen iOS).

There's a good NSHipster entry here that includes these iOS 9 features.

Essentially you need to do the following:

• Allow the view manager to be the first responder.
• Returns an array of UIKeyCommands in the keyCommands controller keyCommands .
• Process the action sent to the view controller.