Apple has attached a hidden button to your iPhone, and you may not have seen it before


Last month, your iPhone got a new button, and maybe you didn't even know.

No, Apple didn't come into your house and stick a button on your mobile secretly. But it did release the latest version of its iPhone software, iOS 14, which includes a Back Tap feature. Back Tap adds to your phone a fascinating new "button" which blurs the line between hardware and software.

Back Tap turns your iPhone's entire back into a giant touch-sensitive button that you can double or triple tap to activate unique phone features. There's a fair chance you really haven't seen it. Apple slipped the Back Tap settings into its Accessibility menu.

Its intended aim is to provide more ways for users to communicate with their devices. Most of the Back Tap options illustrate this by opening the app switcher, notification menu, or control center settings; scrolling through an app or website; activating Siri; or taking a screenshot.

But Back Tap also links into the extremely robust Shortcuts app from Apple, which means that you can make these new buttons do almost everything you can imagine effectively.

It's a fascinating type of button: totally invisible to the naked eye, completely non-functional until it's activated by software, but can be tasked with just a fast tap to open, communicate with, or accomplish almost any task on your smartphone.

Software customization

This customization of the software is important. A future in which Apple limited Back Tap to only a few preset choices aimed at making the iPhone UI more available is easy to imagine.

But the company turned Back Tap into a tool of unlimited ingenuity by opening it up to shortcuts, enabling consumers to come up with their own ways to take advantage of the new button on the back of their smartphones.

It's not just Apple. Google experimented with a similar, but more constrained, Android 11 feature, although it didn't end up making the final cut. Since then, some enterprising developers have replicated the feature for any Android device.

This is also a control level that for iOS devices is almost unheard of. Imagine if Apple allows you to reset the side button on an iPhone 12 to, say, launch Google Assistant, or give your partner a preset text message. It is literally inconceivable.

It's also going well. The program is sensitive, and whatever Apple does to distinguish between a deliberate tap and just keeping your phone constantly, it works perfectly.

I found it especially helpful to activate the Control Center to change device settings quickly.

A button that is almost absolutely free from the limitations of APPLE

To build a new hardware interaction that wasn't possible before, Back Tap repurposes the current sensors and hardware on your iPhone with software. It's a new physical button with which users can communicate, but one that's almost entirely free from the limitations of Apple.

The most direct form of interaction is physical buttons, of course. This is why Samsung insists on a tailor-made Bixby button and why Netflix pays for a spot on the remote of your Roku. And while Apple may not be able to give up control of the physical buttons on your iPhone, the next best thing is Back Tap

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