With the highly useful Back Tap feature, a quick double- or triple-tap on the back of your iPhone can open Control Centre, take a screenshot, trigger accessibility-specific actions or more. Here’s how to enable it and make the most of the feature.
What Is Back Tap?
Back Tap enables your iPhone to perform an action by measuring taps on the device’s back. The feature is very customizable. You can set it up to do normal system actions, like turn your flashlight on and off, or go as far as triggering custom shortcuts.
How do I set it up?
- Check that you have the latest version of iOS on your iPhone 8 or later.
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch and tap Back Tap.
- Tap Double Tap or Triple Tap and choose an action.
- Double- or triple-tap on the back of your iPhone to trigger the action you’ve set.
You can set a double- or triple-tap to trigger an Accessibility Shortcut to quickly access features such as AssistiveTouch, Siri Shortcuts, Magnifier, Reachability and VoiceOver.We recommend choosing the double tap for more common options. If you’re wondering why there’s no “single-tap” mode, it’s because this would result in too many accidental triggers.
Thankfully, the iPhone is very good at detecting exactly when you mean to double or triple tap, reuslting in few accidental triggers. Always tap near the middle of the back (where the Apple logo is on more recent iPhones), and if you’d like to make sure the feature works the best possible we recommend keeping a thin case or none on the device.
What do you use this feature for?
