To go to the Home Screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen with one finger until you hear the second tone. (The first tone lets you know VoiceOver started to process the touch gesture, the second tone tells you when to stop the gesture for Home Screen, and if you continue swiping up, you will hear a third tone and will open the App Switcher.) For me, this gesture is more planting my finger on the very bottom of the screen and sliding upwards. Hope this helps!
iOS and I'm sure iPadOS have had a feature for quite a while now, called AssistiveTouch. If you enable this, you can assign tap gestures to it for single tap, double tap, and press and hold gestures. While this is not necessarily designed for VoiceOver, it works very well with VoiceOver enabled, you just have to do the voiceover Versions for each of those above gestures.
What AssistiveTouch does, is allow you to have a movable software button on your home screen and lock screen, which you can use to assign home, app switcher, and many other actions. This makes iPhones without a home button, a little more bearable, in my humble opinion. Think of it like a software Action button. 😉
There are a lot of options under the AssistiveTouch settings, but you really just want to focus on gestures for the icon. And like I said, just add home an app switcher for now, and see how that works as opposed to doing the default swipe gesture.
You can also assign gestures with voiceover to go to the home screen or app switcher. I did this until I learned it and I still have them set up that way.
Also true. I have a friend who has an iPhone 16, and she uses the one finger triple tap for home, and two finger triple tap for app switcher, because she does not use the single finger triple tap for contextual menus, nor does she use item chooser. So yeah, this is also very doable as well. 😆👍
"While this is not necessarily designed for VoiceOver, it works very well with VoiceOver enabled, you just have to do the voiceover Versions for each of those above gestures."
What does this mean? How do VO users use assistive touch then?
as I understand things, AssistiveTouch is generally for people who have issues navigating a touchscreen device. However, voiceover users can also take advantage of this additional feature. Keep in mind that AssistiveTouch has been around long, long before we had the ability to add custom gestures with voiceover. It was even around before the back tap feature was added.
As for what I meant by using the voiceover equivalent, it's like this.
The AssistiveTouch button will have three tap gestures. They are:
One. Single tap.
Two. Double tap.
Three. Long press and hold.
For us voiceover users, those gestures would work like this:
One. Single tap equals a double tap with voiceover.
Two. Double tap equals a quadruple tap with voiceover (by default).
Three. Long press and hold would be a triple tap with voiceover (by default).
The items above marked as "by default" means that they can be customized under settings, accessibility, VoiceOver, gestures, touch.
I hope this explains things a little more clearly.
I forgot to mention this above, but for the long press and hold gesture, besides the default triple tap with one finger, you can also do a double tap and hold with voiceover.
Comments
Home Screen Gesture
Hi Applerocks,
To go to the Home Screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen with one finger until you hear the second tone. (The first tone lets you know VoiceOver started to process the touch gesture, the second tone tells you when to stop the gesture for Home Screen, and if you continue swiping up, you will hear a third tone and will open the App Switcher.) For me, this gesture is more planting my finger on the very bottom of the screen and sliding upwards. Hope this helps!
Alternatively
iOS and I'm sure iPadOS have had a feature for quite a while now, called AssistiveTouch. If you enable this, you can assign tap gestures to it for single tap, double tap, and press and hold gestures. While this is not necessarily designed for VoiceOver, it works very well with VoiceOver enabled, you just have to do the voiceover Versions for each of those above gestures.
What AssistiveTouch does, is allow you to have a movable software button on your home screen and lock screen, which you can use to assign home, app switcher, and many other actions. This makes iPhones without a home button, a little more bearable, in my humble opinion. Think of it like a software Action button. 😉
There are a lot of options under the AssistiveTouch settings, but you really just want to focus on gestures for the icon. And like I said, just add home an app switcher for now, and see how that works as opposed to doing the default swipe gesture.
HTH. 😃
Custom Voiceover gestures
You can also assign gestures with voiceover to go to the home screen or app switcher. I did this until I learned it and I still have them set up that way.
Re: Custom voiceover gestures
Also true. I have a friend who has an iPhone 16, and she uses the one finger triple tap for home, and two finger triple tap for app switcher, because she does not use the single finger triple tap for contextual menus, nor does she use item chooser. So yeah, this is also very doable as well. 😆👍
The first way worked for going to the home area
The first way worked for going to the home area all i needed to doo was go to where the connector was then swipe up
Assistive touch
"While this is not necessarily designed for VoiceOver, it works very well with VoiceOver enabled, you just have to do the voiceover Versions for each of those above gestures."
What does this mean? How do VO users use assistive touch then?
Explanation
as I understand things, AssistiveTouch is generally for people who have issues navigating a touchscreen device. However, voiceover users can also take advantage of this additional feature. Keep in mind that AssistiveTouch has been around long, long before we had the ability to add custom gestures with voiceover. It was even around before the back tap feature was added.
As for what I meant by using the voiceover equivalent, it's like this.
The AssistiveTouch button will have three tap gestures. They are:
One. Single tap.
Two. Double tap.
Three. Long press and hold.
For us voiceover users, those gestures would work like this:
One. Single tap equals a double tap with voiceover.
Two. Double tap equals a quadruple tap with voiceover (by default).
Three. Long press and hold would be a triple tap with voiceover (by default).
The items above marked as "by default" means that they can be customized under settings, accessibility, VoiceOver, gestures, touch.
I hope this explains things a little more clearly.
RE: long press and hold
I forgot to mention this above, but for the long press and hold gesture, besides the default triple tap with one finger, you can also do a double tap and hold with voiceover.
HTH.