Almost every iPhone Apple sells the action button, which provides a quick way to access features, apps, or shortcuts on your phone with just the press of a button. It can be a flashlight, activates a smart home routine, or gives you access to any number of custom shortcuts without unlocking your phone and accessing the app.
Apple added an action button to the iPhone 15 Pro to replace the original ring/silent switch of the iPhone, which is a recognition of everyone, and many people remain silent anyway. There was a reassignable button as a “pro” feature at the time, but like Dynamic Island, it was short, even an entry-level iPhone 16e.
How to use action buttons
You can use the Action button on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16E, just press or hold the volume up and down button above the small button above the phone's left side. By default, the action button will mute or cancel your text and ringtones. This fills the same character as the old ring/silent switch. Going into the Settings app will let you reassign it to another task, and you can silence your phone through the Control Center.
How to reassign the operation button to flashlight
Out of the box, Apple allows you to assign action buttons to multiple different controls: mute mode (ring/silence), focus (specific focus or menu that allows you to choose each time), camera (such as a photo or photo specific modes or videos like), flashlights, voice memos, recognition of music, translations, magnifying glasses, controls (specific controls from the control center of aircraft mode), shortcuts, accessibility (accessible to specific accessibility features) Or do nothing at all.
If you want to switch from the default, silent mode to a flashlight, you need to unlock your phone first. Then:
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Open the Settings app.
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Click the “Action Button”.
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From there, slide through different options until you log into the flashlight.
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To test whether it works, try pressing the Action button.
You can use the same procedure to reassign the action button to any built-in action provided by Apple.
How to make the action button open an application
If you want to get more adventurous, you can also turn on the Action button on your phone. For example, suppose your preferred game on your iPhone is Balatro. Whenever you press, you can automatically raise the action button to the Balatro.
To set it up, you need to unlock your iPhone.
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Open the Settings app.
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Click the “Action Button”.
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Swipe over the options until you reach “Shortcut”.
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Click “Select Shortcut…”
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Then click “Open app…”
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Then scroll until you find the selected app and click on it.
This process works for any app on your phone, including features for specific apps, such as new notes you want to jump directly into Chatgpt's voice mode or Notes app.
How to make the shortcut for the action button activate
Shortcut Actions also work for more complex Apple shortcuts. Technically, you choose to activate it (rather than a location-based shortcut) any shortcut designed to trigger. There are a lot of fun shortcuts out there, you can make a lot of custom shortcuts yourself, but to use a simple example, this is how you set the action button to start the Pomodoro Timer.
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Open the Settings app.
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Click the “Action Button”.
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Refresh the option before selecting Shortcuts.
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Click “Select Shortcut…”
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Click on any shortcut you want to activate.
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Press and hold the action button to make sure it works.
For Pomodoro Timer, you will be prompted to choose how long you want the timer to last, and you can click “Done” to start it.
Between lock screen widgets and app shortcuts, home screen widgets and action buttons, there are now multiple ways to check information inside the app, adjust specific settings, or use specific features from the app on your iPhone. This is confusing, but a good rule of thumb is that the action button is best for the action you only need to enable once or binary, i.e. on/off. Many other things work, but at some point you want to spend time in the app instead of using buttons on your phone.
This article originally appeared on Engadget
