All latest iPhone models come without a home button on the front. You have to use gestures, side and volume buttons to accomplish the tasks that were previously done with home button. However, many people still miss the home button in iPhone. Fortunately, you can use the Assistive Touch accessibility feature in iPhone to add soft home button. This will help you to get things done quickly without hassle.
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Why Do You Need Home Button?
There are many situations you need a home button, especially if you are not good at swiping and gestures.
- Quickly go to the home screen or open app switcher to navigate to particular app.
- Things like taking screenshot were breeze with home button. Now, you have to press volume up and side button which may be difficult for people struggling to press multiple buttons at a time.
- Home button works great when the app is frozen and you got struck on the app screen.
At any case, it is nice to have a home button to improve your productivity for getting things done faster.
What is Soft Home Button?
Since the home button is part of hardware, it is not possible to bring it back unless Apple change the iPhone model’s design. However, you can add a soft home button on the screen and customize the button to do your frequent tasks.
- This soft home button is an accessibility feature called Assistive Touch in iPhone.
- It will look like a button on the screen with concentric circles. You can move the button to anywhere on the screen.
- It will appear dimmed so that not disturb your screen viewability. You can change the opacity to control the visibility.
- You can tap and choose the action.
How to Use Assistive Touch in iPhone?
Follow the below instructions to enable Assistive Touch in iPhone.
- Tap on the “Settings” app and go to “Accessibility” section.
- Here you will see many options for aiding the quick access and tap on “Touch” option.
- By default, “Assistive Touch” is disabled on the iPhone. Tap on it to view further options.
- Enable “Assistive Touch” option to see a small button on the screen appearing instantly.
Related: How to disable in-app purchases in iPhone?
Customizing Assistive Touch Button
Now that you can tap on the button and check the available options. However, iPhone allows you to customize the options for the Assistive Touch button. The button contains a top level menu icons that appears after you tap on it. In addition, you can customize the action for double and long tapping on the button.
Top Level Menu
When you are in Assistive Touch section, tap on “Customize Top Level Menu” option.
This top level menu will appear when you single tap on the Assistive Touch button.
- By default, you will have six menu icons in the top level menu. Tap on + or – to add or remove the icons.
- You can also tap on any existing icon to replace that menu item in the button. iPhone offers large number of actions for you to add in the Assistive Touch button. You can even add shortcuts like open alarm or open a website using the soft button.
- Some icons like Home, Screenshot, Siri or Control Center will trigger the action immediately.
- However, icons like Device will have additional options that you can choose. For example, Device menu contains lock screen, rotate screen, mute, volume up/down options. You can even tap on the more icon and select further actions like screenshot, App Switcher, etc.
- Custom icon allows you to create new gestures like long press, double tap, etc.
- Anytime, you can tap on “Reset” to set the menu to initial state.
After customizing the top level menu items, you can tap on the Assistive Touch soft home button and get the action done quickly.
Customizing Tapping
You may wonder why you need to tap on the button and then choose Home to go to home screen. Many of us may want to go to the home screen directly when first tapping on it. First you have to remember, Assistive Touch is part of accessibility feature to help people with disability. Therefore, you need to setup properly before using it for your need.
If you want to go to home screen on first tap, choose “Single-Tap” option under “Custom Actions” section. You will see similar set of options like top level menu and choose “Home” option. Henceforth, you can tap on the Assistive Touch button to go to home.
Similarly choose your favorite actions for Double-Tap and Long Press action.
Additional Customizations
Assistive Touch settings page also offers few other options:
- Tap on “Create New Gesture…” and create your custom gesture.
- Set idle opacity to dim the button when not in use.
- Choose the action when connecting to pointer devices like mouse. Setup dwell control with fallback and tolerance to work with pointer devices. For example, you can setup hot corners similar to macOS when using mouse with iPhone.
- Enable Assistive Touch to confirm the payments instead of double pressing the side button. After enabling “Confirm with Assistive Touch” option, you have to setup this before using.
Final Words
As you can see, Assistive Touch is very useful to access home screen and do many other actions quickly. We use frequently for taking screenshots and accessing control center. You can use this soft button when you are not comfortable with swiping and pressing the buttons simultaneously.
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