[iOS] US Passport agency rapid(ish) redialer
May 24, 2023 5:51 AM Subscribe
[iOS] US Passport agency rapid(ish) redialer
People in the US waiting for passports often have to call the passport info line as their travel date approaches to move things along, but that number is swamped and on many tries plays a long recorded apology before hanging up. This iPhone/iOS shortcut lets you redial the moment that apology starts, so you can immediately try again, with a minimum of effort.
The shortcut works because the passport agency message has a generic message before either playing a "we're going to hang up on you, sorry" apology or letting you in to the phone tree of options.
The shortcut waits for that either apology or phone tree moment and then asks you if you want to redial. That's it.
There is a neat-ish trick here. Shortcuts can call numbers, but there's no shortcut command to hang up. We could wait for the passport agency to play the entire message and then decide it's ready to hang up on our call, but that's slow.
So what happens here? When you click redial, the script disables your network connections so the call gets disconnected, and then it restarts cell and wifi. Well, originally it did. Now it just turns off cell at the start and uses wifi only, toggling just it to hang up. You'll need wifi calling for this.
Note that this shortcut enables airplane mode (to force wifi calling) and then turns airplane mode off at the end. It doesn't check for state, so if you already had airplane mode off, it will be on after running this.
People in the US waiting for passports often have to call the passport info line as their travel date approaches to move things along, but that number is swamped and on many tries plays a long recorded apology before hanging up. This iPhone/iOS shortcut lets you redial the moment that apology starts, so you can immediately try again, with a minimum of effort.
The shortcut works because the passport agency message has a generic message before either playing a "we're going to hang up on you, sorry" apology or letting you in to the phone tree of options.
The shortcut waits for that either apology or phone tree moment and then asks you if you want to redial. That's it.
There is a neat-ish trick here. Shortcuts can call numbers, but there's no shortcut command to hang up. We could wait for the passport agency to play the entire message and then decide it's ready to hang up on our call, but that's slow.
So what happens here? When you click redial, the script disables your network connections so the call gets disconnected, and then it restarts cell and wifi. Well, originally it did. Now it just turns off cell at the start and uses wifi only, toggling just it to hang up. You'll need wifi calling for this.
Note that this shortcut enables airplane mode (to force wifi calling) and then turns airplane mode off at the end. It doesn't check for state, so if you already had airplane mode off, it will be on after running this.
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