So I guess this is a gadget blog now? Because apparently that is the stuff I am posting.  I have come a long way from the days when I would write posts about my attempts to get upskirt shots of the characters in Fatal Frame 2.

I’m not actually sure I have improved as a person since then, but at least I’m trying to write about stuff with more social worth.

Anyway, I thought about titling this post “In which, I am schooled by a Walmart cashier” because frankly this is a story about me getting schooled by a Walmart cashier, but in the end I figured I would go for a post title that was a little more search-engine friendly and then I opened the post with an anecdote that will probably turn anyone off reading further.

It is possible that I am not acting entirely logically here.

Anyway, to get back to the bit where I was forced to admit that I was not the alpha geek in an exchange: A few nights ago, I was making a purchase at our local Walmart and trying to use Walmart Pay since they do not support Apple Pay and because who uses credit cards anymore anyway? COMMUNISTS AND CAVEMEN, that’s who.  Contactless pay with your phone is what REAL AMERICANS use.

Technically I am only half American, but that is not important for the purposes of this story.

Anyway, Walmart Pay is a pain to get to if you open the Walmart app while you are standing IN a Walmart, because it’s smart enough to know that you are in one of their stores and really wants to be helpful.  So there are several screens to click through before you can actually pay for anything, and I was apologizing to the cashier for this while I clicked and hunted for the “give the massive faceless corporation some money” button, and he said “hey, you know, if you shop here a lot you could just set up a widget or something” and then he pulled out his personal phone to show me an icon labeled “Walmart Pay” on his home screen, which when clicked went directly to the critical feature of the application.

He continued with “I don’t know if Apple has anything like that but you could give it a try” and I thanked him as the last shreds of my ego shriveled into nothingness.

So, to avoid any more of the long story, it turns out that this is super easy to do and an excellent use of the “Shortcuts” feature in iOS, so I thought I would share it with any of my readers who might also find it useful.  I even took some screenshots, which look awful because I didn’t think to switch to Dark Mode and I didn’t do a very consistent job of highlighting the controls.

It starts by opening the Shortcuts app and choosing the + New Shortcut button.

Then +  Add Action

Search for “Walmart” and select it.

Then choose the “Open Walmart Pay” option.

Then choose Next

After this, you can enter a name for the shortcut

When you click “Done”, you’ll be taken to the Shortcuts app home screen.  Choose the … menu for your new shortcut.

Then press the … option in the shortcut editor.

And choose Add to Home Screen

Afterwards, you will have a nice icon you can use to skip a lot of annoying dialogs.  You can customize the icon, icon color, that sort of thing but I didn’t want to have too many more screenshots in this post.

I haven’t used Shortcuts for much other than morning and night routines, but this seems like a great use of them to avoid a small frustration and I own a great deal of thanks to a guy who was entirely too smart to be stuck ringing up groceries for a living.  Hopefully he is moving on to better things soon.