Save From Your Phone: iPhone Shortcut + Android Share Sheet Setup

Most of what you save probably doesn't happen at a desk. You're in Twitter, or Slack, or someone texts you a link, and you want it in your reading list without breaking stride to copy a URL, switch apps, and paste it somewhere. On desktop that's what a browser extension is for. On a phone, the right tool is your OS's own share sheet — and Cowpin plugs into both iOS and Android's, just differently, because the two platforms hand links to apps in very different ways.

Here's how to set each one up.

iPhone: a Shortcut in your Share sheet

iOS doesn't let a website add a button to Safari's share menu — only apps and Shortcuts can appear there. So the way to get "Save to Cowpin" into your Share sheet is to build a one-time Shortcut that posts the current page to Cowpin's API. It takes about two minutes and you only do it once.

1. Get your token. In Cowpin, go to Settings → Account → Bookmarks and find the "Save from your iPhone" card. Tap Generate my token — this creates a personal API token scoped just to adding bookmarks. Keep it somewhere you can copy from (you'll paste it into the Shortcut, not into a URL, so it's never exposed in your browsing history).
2. Open the Shortcuts app, tap the + to start a new shortcut, then Add Action and search for Get Contents of URL.
3. Set the URL to https://www.cowpin.com/api/bookmark/quick-add and the Method to POST.
4. Expand the action. Under Headers, add one named Authorization with the value Bearer followed by your token. Under Request Body, choose JSON and add a field named url set to Shortcut Input (the little variable Shortcuts fills in automatically with whatever you're sharing).
5. Rename the shortcut to something like "Save to Cowpin," then turn on Show in Share Sheet and set it to accept URLs.

That's the whole setup. From then on, in Safari (or any app with a share button), tap the Share icon, tap Save to Cowpin, and the page lands in your library instantly — no app switch, no confirmation screen, nothing to tap twice.

A couple of notes if something doesn't work: if the shortcut errors, double check the header name is exactly Authorization and the value starts with Bearer (with the space). If it silently does nothing, make sure "Show in Share Sheet" is actually toggled on for URLs — it's easy to leave it scoped to Shortcuts input only.

Android: no setup at all

Android's share sheet works differently — any installed web app (a "Progressive Web App," or PWA) can register itself as a share target, and the OS surfaces it automatically. Cowpin already declares itself as one, so there's nothing to configure:

1. Open cowpin.com in Chrome on your phone.
2. Tap the browser menu and choose Add to Home Screen (sometimes shown as Install app).
3. That's it. Cowpin now shows up as a destination in the Android share sheet, the same list where Twitter, Gmail, and your notes app already live.

From any app, tap Share, pick Cowpin, and it opens Cowpin's new-bookmark form with the link (and title, if the source app sent one) already filled in. The one difference from iPhone: Android hands off to a short confirmation screen rather than saving instantly, so you get a chance to add a tag or mark it read-later before it's stored — a small trade-off for zero setup.

Why two different mechanisms

It'd be simpler to tell you one universal trick, but iOS and Android genuinely don't give web apps the same capabilities. iOS treats a website's presence in the share sheet as an app-only privilege, so Shortcuts is the sanctioned workaround — and it happens to be a good one, since it saves instantly with no UI at all. Android's Web Share Target API was built for exactly this case, so a PWA install is all it takes. Both end up in the same place: your link, saved to Cowpin, without you having to open a tab and type in a URL.

Once it's saved, that's where Cowpin does the rest — it archives a readable copy of the page so it survives even if the original goes down, and it's searchable and taggable alongside everything else in your library.

If you haven't tried Cowpin yet, start here — it's free while we're finding our first users, and importing from Pocket, Pinboard, Instapaper, or a plain bookmarks export takes one click.