NFC tap tags

Stick a tag by the back door. Tap your phone on the way out and the neighbors know — YardTime never opens, and your phone doesn't even need to be unlocked.

Two tags, one one-time setup: a tag by the door that means out, and a tag just inside that means in. After that, letting the dog out is something you do with your elbow while holding a leash and a coffee.

The app has this same guide built in — Settings → Tap tags — with a button that drops you straight into Shortcuts. This page is the version you can read on a laptop while you set it up.

What you'll need

• Two NFC stickers. Any NTAG215 tag works; they come in rolls for a few dollars. (If you're sticking one to a metal door or frame, buy "on-metal" tags — plain stickers barely read through metal.)
• An iPhone XS or later. That's the first model that reads tags in the background, without an app open.
• The Shortcuts app, which is already on your iPhone.
• YardTime, installed and in a yard group.

Why this happens in Shortcuts, not in YardTime

Worth thirty seconds, because it explains the fiddly part.

iOS gives a third-party app exactly two ways to react to an NFC tap. The app can write a web address to the tag, and iOS opens that address when you tap — which means the app comes to the foreground, which means you're standing at the door looking at your phone. Or you can bind the tag to an NFC automation in Apple's Shortcuts app, which is allowed to run an app's action without opening it.

The second one is the experience worth having, so that's the one YardTime is built around. The trade is that the tags get created in Apple's app rather than in ours, and Apple doesn't let us do it for you. Hence the steps below.

The actions themselves — "Let the dog out" and "Bring the dog in" — are already published by YardTime and already run silently. Nothing needs enabling first.

Set up your "out" tag

1. Open Shortcuts.
2. Go to the Automation tab at the bottom.
3. Tap + (top right) to create a new automation.
4. Choose NFC from the list.
5. Tap Scan, then hold the top of your iPhone against the tag until it reads.
6. Give the tag a name you'll recognise later — "Back door out" does nicely.
7. Tap Add Action and search for Let the dog out. Pick the one listed under YardTime.
8. Tap Next.
9. Turn off "Ask Before Running", and confirm. This is the step that makes the tap silent — leave it on and every tap becomes a prompt you have to answer.
10. Tap Done.

Now stick the tag wherever your hand already goes on the way out: the door frame, the wall by the light switch, the back of the door itself.

Set up your "in" tag

Exactly the same nine steps, with two changes: scan your second tag, and in step 7 search for Bring the dog in instead.

Put this one where you'll pass it coming back — just inside the door, or on the treat jar.

Good to know

• The timer. "Let the dog out" uses your default duration, which is whatever you picked the last time you let the dog out from the YardTime app. If you want a particular tag to always mean, say, fifteen minutes, you can set the duration on the action inside the automation.
• Locked is fine. Background tag reading works with the phone locked. You don't have to wake it, unlock it, or open anything.
• Where the antenna is. The NFC coil is at the top of the back of the iPhone. If a tap isn't registering, you're probably holding the middle of the phone against it.
• Apple moves things around. These labels shift slightly between iOS releases. If a button isn't worded exactly as above, look for the nearest equivalent — the shape of the flow hasn't changed in years.
• You don't have to use tags at all. The same two actions work by voice ("Hey Siri, let the dog out"), from a Home or Lock Screen widget, from the Action Button, and from your Apple Watch.

If a tap doesn't do anything

Run down this list in order — it's almost always one of the first three:

1. Is the automation switched on? Open Shortcuts → Automation and check it's enabled and listed.
2. Is "Ask Before Running" still on? Then the tap fired, and iOS is waiting for a confirmation you never saw. Open the automation and turn it off.
3. Did the tag actually read? A tag stuck to metal, or covered by a thick case, may not read at all. Try holding the top of the phone directly against the tag with nothing in between.
4. Did the status change but the neighbors not see it? That's a sync question, not an NFC one — the support page covers it.

Still stuck? Write to [email protected] and tell us which step it stops at. A real person reads every message.