How To Directly Access Threads Profiles Using Shortcuts

In learning about Threads' unique URL scheme, I've shared two shortcuts for accessing others' and your own profile directly in the app.

In Federico Viticci’s post on Threader, a shortcut to open Threads profiles from Mastodon and Twitter directly in the Threads app, he mentioned in a footnote that Threads’ URL scheme uses the unique pattern barcelona:// – which immediately got my attention.

In the post, his excellent shortcut uses OCR to look at the device’s screen and extract the username, before passing that into barcelona://user?username={Username}.

In my attempts to recreate my Twitter follow graph on Threads, I used Viticci’s shortcut to capture as many links to Threads profiles that I come across – many, many people were posting theirs on launch day, so I ran his shortcut a lot initially.

However, lots of people were (and still are) simply mentioning their profile or posting screenshots of the handle, like my friend Crim – so, I wanted to make another Shortcuts solution that let me type out any username and redirect into their profile.

My “Open username in Threads” shortcut will prompt you to enter in a username, then fills out a URL like barcelona://user?username=MatthewCassinelli – then, the Open URLs action activates the deep link and redirects you into the profile inside the Threads app, so you can follow the person.

Going further with the URL scheme, Viticci also followed up on Threads with yet another discovery – using barcelona://user redirects the app to account tab, making it easy to check your profile from Shortcuts – so I made that into a shortcut too.

Get these in my Threads folder of shortcuts – and make sure to check out my story on how to make Threads work well on iPad with Stage Manager.

Posts You Might Like

New for members: Things beta shortcuts
Hey members, I've just published 11 new shortcuts from today's stream featuring the new actions from the Things beta.
All 25 of the Mac-Only Actions Coming to Shortcuts for Mac ?
Tesla app adds Shortcuts support for vehicle controls »
The Tesla app has updated with a set of actions for Shortcuts to control your vehicle – check out the full list, and my suggestions for improvement.
Messages Gets “Open Conversation” Action for Shortcuts in iOS 18.4 Beta
There’s a new “Open Conversation” action for Messages in the iOS 18.4 betas – here’s how to use it, what I’d like to see added, and some sample shortcuts.