Less Yap, More Tip

Today’s advent tip is how to open the Messages app (aka the SMS app) with a specific phone number populated in the To: field. This is accomplished with great ease because the iPhone has implemented the sms: URI scheme. Therefore, we can use the UIApplication class’ openURL method, which we have seen before when we discussed how to dial a phone number, pre-compose an email, and yes, even open a URL.

So here it is: the one line of code you need to pop open the SMS app with a phone number:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"sms:5555555555"]];