TIL: iPhone Back Tap
Last updated: Thu Oct 03 2024
Don’t have an iPhone 15 with an Action Button™️? It turns out you can get something similar with an accessibility feature on all iPhones on iOS 14 or later.
Just go into Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and enable either double or triple tap. You can map it to all kinds of system controls or any Shortcut — a wider selection than you can with the Action Button, actually. I set mine to open Spotlight, so I can jump quickly to another app from anywhere in the system by tapping the back of my phone.
Surprisingly, this works even with a case on — it’s probably based on haptics. Unfortunately, it’s not always extremely responsive — sometimes it takes a second or two, and sometimes it doesn’t register at all 😞 Still, it’s a neat feature that I’m already using regularly.