How to use a virtual home button instead of the iPhone X’s gestures

“I’ve got no problem with the iPhone X’s new home indicator and its swiping gestures. In fact, I quite like them,” Chris Welch writes for The Verge. “Swiping up to go home feels like second nature after just a few days using the phone. Same for getting to the app switcher by pausing after that upward swipe.”

MacDailyNews Take: Yes, they’re already completely natural, just six days in.

“But I’m not a big fan of how far away Control Center feels now. That upper right corner is a stretch for my thumb — even with my big hands,” Welch writes. “So yesterday I thought about trying a different method to reach those useful shortcuts, and it’s a trick that has been in iOS for years: it’s called AssistiveTouch.”

Welch writes, “AssistiveTouch is a feature in the accessibility settings (under the ‘general’ section) of iOS that puts a floating, virtual home button on your screen that you can drag wherever you want.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: We’re fine with the iPhone X’s new gestures, but regardless, Apple’s leadership in Accessibility benefits everyone.

8 Comments

  1. When you think about it. If Steve Jobs could have had no buttons at all on the iPhone, it would have. No buttons on the mouse, he would have. Any button or anything Apple adds to a device is a necessary evil. However the Apple TV remote seems to be the exception to this. It seems there is an unrelenting force to add more buttons, where none should exist.

  2. I give AssistiveTouch lessons to my local RNIB group who are 100% iPhone users. It’s a great experience having to describe even the simplest of navigation actions with no verbal references to visual concepts like shapes, colours etc. using only haptic feedback and audible hints. Some of those folk can navigate their phones to get what they need in a blink.
    Glad that Apple has baked in support for blind users while moving the sighted to the next paradigm.

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