Track Delivery by Texting Yourself With Tracking Numbers on IOS
iOS: This is a little gimmick – a tiny hack if you like – and has been available on iOS for years, but it’s worth recalling if you don’t feel like subscribing to apps or services to track incoming packets. (This also applies if you know something special is coming and you need an easy way to chase the delivery driver.)
If you have an inbound package from UPS, USPS, or OnTrac – the three services I tested today – please copy the tracking number. Open Messages and send yourself a text with this number. This turns it into an interactive link, making it much easier to check the status of a specified package from any carrier that ships it. How simple it is.
I suppose you can do the same copy / paste process in Notes, but it’s much easier to forget than the text you sent yourself. And then you have to go in and delete the note instead of just letting your text go out of sight and sight when you receive new messages.
At least that’s my argument. As I said, I subscribe to all sorts of ” let me know what’s on the way ” services, and there are tons of other applications you can use to track incoming packets through a single interface. However, if you want to keep a close eye on a single submission, you can’t go wrong with the simple approach.
Of course, with one caveat. I tried this little trick with FedEx tracking numbers – there are actually several of them – and Messages mistook them for phone numbers (probably because of their length). It’s a shame that there is no way to tell iOS that you want the string of numbers to be tracked as a package and not as a contact. If you and the FedEx driver are negotiating by name, this little trick is probably not for you.