Home button to no home button: Making the transition

The main function of the home button, hence its name, is to go to your home screen from wherever you are on your iPhone. No home button means a new way of doing things: accessing the home screen through a gesture

Place your finger at the bottom edge of the screen. If using VoiceOver, you’ll hear a slight popping sound (that’s probably the best way to describe it), which will confirm your finger is in the right place. Slide your finger up the screen, until you hear the second, slightly higher pitched, popping sound. As soon as you hear that sound, lift your finger, and you’ll be on your home screen.

If you have haptic feedback enabled (it is enabled by default), you will feel slight vibrations along with the popping sounds.

In case you didn’t know, the app switcher is the place to see what apps you have open on your phone. From there, you can either launch an app you have open, or close it.

Navigating to the app switcher is very similar to navigating to your home screen. Place your finger at the bottom edge of the screen. If using VoiceOver, you’ll hear a slight popping sound to confirm you’re in the right place. Then slide your finger upwards until you hear the third popping sound, which is higher pitched than the second. Lift your finger, and this will take you to the app switcher.

If you have haptic feedback enabled (it is enabled by default), you will feel slight vibrations alongside the popping sounds.

In case you didn’t know, Siri is an assistant built in to most Apple products. You can use it to open apps, check your messages and send messages, make phone calls, and much, much, more.

On an iPhone with a home button, holding down the home button activates Siri. However, on an iPhone with no home button, if you want to activate Siri using a button, you hold down the side button. If using an iPad, hold down the top button.

There is also the option of simply using your voice, and saying ‘Siri’ or ‘Hey Siri’.

The accessibility shortcut is a way to activate your favourite accessibility feature. If you have sight loss, this could be VoiceOver, Zoom, or Speak Screen for example.

Previously, triple clicking the home button three times would activate the accessibility shortcut. On iPhones with no home button, you now triple click the side button to activate the accessibility shortcut. If using an iPad, triple click the top button.

From the Settings app on your phone, if you navigate to Accessibility > VoiceOver > Commands, you can customise and assign gestures to tasks. These include navigating to the home screen and app switcher. The standard gestures will still work, but this gives you more scope to be able to use alternative gestures if you’d prefer.

BackTap is a feature that allows you to sign actions to double tapping and triple tapping the back of your iPhone. You can assign one action to double tapping, and another to triple tapping.

This could be navigating to your home screen or app switcher, or your favourite accessibility feature. For BackTap to work most effectively, we recommend tapping the back of your iPhone near where the back camera area is.

It’s also important to note that sometimes you may end up tapping the back of your phone accidentally meaning you may perform an action unintentionally.

To set up and activate BackTap, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > BackTap. You can also customise BackTap gestures through the VoiceOver Commands Settings.

AssistiveTouch is an accessibility feature that places a button-like icon on your screen, which you can then use to perform functions on your iPhone. It’s an alternative to using gestures or pressing the physical buttons.

By default, activating the AssistiveTouch icon brings up the assistiveTouch menu, so you can access functions like home screen and app switcher.

You can customise how the AssistiveTouch icon works, so you can use it to activate a particular function without having to access the menu first. For example, you could set it so that single tapping the AssistiveTouch icon takes you to your home screen, while double tapping takes you to the app switcher. There is also a long press option.

If you use VoiceOver, the gestures change slightly: single tap becomes double tap, double tap becomes quadruple tap. The long press becomes either a triple tap, or double tap and hold, depending on what you prefer.

If you use VoiceOver, you will need to locate the AssistiveTouch icon by exploring the screen with one finger. You unfortunately can’t navigate to it using the swiping gestures you may use to move through items on the screen, however, once you’ve found the icon, you should be able to find it quickly going forward.

To enable and customise AssistiveTouch, go to the Settings app. Then select Touch > AssistiveTouch.

If you’re new to VoiceOver, or just want a refresher on the different gestures, including those for accessing the home screen and app switcher, iOS 18 introduces a VoiceOver tutorial. Through this tutorial, you can discover everything you need to know about navigating and using your iPhone with VoiceOver.

It’s a practical collection of lessons, giving you the opportunity to practise the gestures as you go along, so you know what they feel like.

To maximise security, you can enable Face ID to require attention to be able to work. In simple terms, this means that your eyes are open and you’re looking at the screen.

However, if you have sight loss, this can be more difficult. There is the option to turn this off, so you don’t have to be looking at the screen or have your eyes open for Face ID  to work. If you use VoiceOver when you first set up your iPhone, attention settings will be turned off by default.

If you have an Apple Watch, you can set it up so that it can authenticate the unlocking of your iPhone, in those circumstances when there is an obstruction preventing Face ID from working.

There doesn’t seem to be an obvious pattern as to when this feature works, but it is an extra method of unlocking your iPhone that can be helpful.