Apple iPhone (iOS) NFC Apps

Many native and 3rd party apps exist for the iPhone that use NFC functionality and NFC tags. In some cases, a 3rd party iPhone app is not required to use NFC functionality.

Buy iPhone NFC Tags

List of iPhone NFC Apps

The following is a non-exhaustive list of useful iPhone apps that are primarily focused on NFC; these are commonly used by software developers to validate NFC software or to encode small quantities of NFC tags.

GoToTags iPhone App
- Read and use NFC tags
NXP TagInfo
- A developer tool from NXP to view technical information about NFC chips
NXP TagWriter
- A developer tool from NXP to encode small quantities of NFC tags
ST NFC Tap
- A simple app from STMicroelectronics to read and encode ST25 NFC chips

iPhone Apps That Use NFC

Several native and 3rd party iPhone apps use NFC to enhance their feature set; most use the iOS Background NFC Tag Reading feature to listen to URI schemes that are relevant to their app. To use these features; encode an NFC tag with the appropriate format and data (usually NDEF) and test on an iPhone with the appropriate app installed.

Known apps that include NFC functionality include:

Native iPhone Apps

Mail
- Listens for NDEF email records to trigger composing a new email to an email address; does not support subject or body fields
Safari
- Listens for NDEF website records and opens the URL in the Safari web browser
Shortcuts
- Trigger personal automation actions using NFC tags

3rd Party iPhone Apps

Facebook
- Listens for NDEF URI records with the prefix “fb://“
Microsoft Edge
- Listens for NDEF website records and opens the URL in the Edge browser
Popl:
- Share contact information via an NFC tag

No App Required

As many of the native iPhone apps use NFC, a 3rd party app is not required for some basic, yet useful NFC functionality on the iPhone. The most common use of NFC on the iPhone for Connected Things (not payment) is to use an NFC tag to open a website. The native Safari app handles this use case well by listening for NDEF website records, so a 3rd party app is not needed. This broadens the user base that can use the NFC functionality as an app download is not required.