Did you know that your iPhone has a cool hidden feature that allows you to activate certain actions every time you touch the back panel of your phone? For example, you can now take a screenshot by double tapping or open the camera by triple tapping on the back panel of your iPhone. With the new back-touch feature in iOS 14, the entire back panel of your iPhone basically transforms into one large touch-sensitive button, allowing you to interact with your phone like never before.
Apart from the available actions present in the Back Tap menu, the function also integrates well with From Apple Shortcuts application. Furthermore, this makes it possible to assign almost any action that is available as a shortcut on the Internet. In this guide, we tell you how to use the new Back Tap feature in iOS 14.
iOS 14: How to enable and use the Back Tap feature
Please note that this feature only works on iPhone 8 and newer models with iOS 14. Also, this feature is not available on iPad. With that said, follow these steps to enable back tap on your iPhone.
- On your iPhone, go to Settings.
- Scroll down a bit and go to Accessibility.
- On the next screen, under Physics and motor, tap I touched.
- Scroll to the bottom and go to Touch Back.
- You will now see two options: Double Tap and Triple Tap.
- You can assign any action that is available in the list. For example, you can configure the Double Tap action to take a quick screenshot, while the Triple Tap action can be assigned for quick access to the Control Center.
- Once you have assigned the actions, exit the settings. Now you can start using the back tap on your iPhone.
iOS 14: Back Tap integration with shortcuts
The back tap also integrates well with the Shortcuts app. This means that in addition to having the actions that are already present in the post-touch menu, you can also assign custom shortcuts if you want. For example, if you have a shortcut that allows you to launch the Instagram story camera from the Shortcuts app, you can now assign it to a simple double or triple tap.
All you need to do here is make sure you download Apple Shortcuts application on your iPhone. Once the app is installed on your phone, visit RoutineHub to get a host of custom shortcuts. To download a shortcut and assign it to tap back on your iPhone, follow these steps.
- Go to RoutineHub on your iPhone.
- Find the shortcut you want to download and open it.
- Hit Get direct access to download it to your iPhone.
- Doing this will redirect you to the Shortcuts app. Scroll down and tap Add untrusted shortcut.
- Exit the Shortcuts app once you add your new shortcut.
- Go to iPhone Settings and repeat the steps above to assign this new shortcut as a double tap or triple tap action.
Here’s how you can enable and use the new roll back feature in iOS 14. Let us know in the comments what you plan to do with this nifty new feature.