A question for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max owners. What are you using the new action button for? And do you find it useful?
I currently have it set to open the Seeing AI app. I did consider Be My Eyes / Be My AI, but I currently use that app more often for describing pictures already on my phone or in messages using the share sheet than for taking pictures.
I tried it out for Do Not Disturb too, but didn't like this for two reasons. First, I found this toggle only worked if I woke up the phone, and so not when I simply had the phone in my pocket. Secondly, if set to Do Not Disturb, it only toggles between Do Not Disturb and Off. If the phone was initially on Personal for example, and I press the action button, it switches successfully to Do Not Disturb. But when I press it again, instead of switching back to the previous state, Personal, it instead switches focus to Off.
I really hope they introduce the ability to assign a double press and a triple press too.
Dave
By Dave Nason, 7 October, 2023
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Just Press Record
I have it set to open an app, Just Press Record. I had it set to camera, but I really don't have cause to use camera, so I switched. I also had it set to mute, but I didn't like not knowing if I accidentally muted my phone.
\
Interesting
Interesting, I shall check that out. I’ve never really played around with shortcuts til now. The app always seemed a bit fiddly, plus until now, I struggled to think of good uses. I will try this though.
I use back tap for Notification Centre and control centre, as using the standard slide gestures from the top of the screen can be tricky, especially when using the phone one handed.
@Bruce I’m curious, why do you use Just Press Record rather than the Voice Memos? From what I’ve heard, Voice Memos is integrated very well with the action button.
Yeah if using it for mute, the old switch was better than the new button.
Dave
I wish I could use it for walkie talkie style apps
One use for the action button that I would love to see is the ability to use it to toggle the microphone in push-to-talk, walkie talkie type apps. I can't remember exactly when this was introduced, but Apple did introduce a push-to-talk framework in iOs which essentially enables push-to-talk functionality globally within the OS, without needing to first switch to the push-to-talk app. The action button could be a natural extension of that push-to-talk framework functionality.
Multi Button
So I have set up the Multi Button shortcut, and after some initial problems it seems to be working well.
Oliver, I wonder did you have similar problems? On the first run of the shortcut, it seemed to display a permission dialog box, but it was not accessible to VoiceOver, and made a rather scary sound when I touched and swiped on the screen. With some tapping around and toggling of VoiceOver, I managed to muddle through it. Then it happened again the first time I ran the secondary action.
After somehow getting through that, I now seem to have it working ok. I currently have it set to Seeing AI and Be My Eyes.
Dave