Action Button Behavior Customization

By Enes Deniz, 2 September, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Can the action button on newer iPhones be customized to let you trigger different things by pressing it twice or three times, or long-pressing/pressing and holding it? If not, it's weird, surprising and shameful.

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Comments

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, September 2, 2025 - 21:26

Since my iPhone doesn't have the Action button and I haven't received any replies, I had to ask chatGPT about that and rely on its response, according to which the Action button lacks the customization options I mentioned in my post, so I submitted my request to Apple and hope I can use the Action button to launch more useful shortcuts/actions once I buy an iPhone with one.

By Enes Deniz on Wednesday, September 3, 2025 - 14:51

Apple itself should allow for more customization and you shouldn't have to go through all those steps to use the Action button for a single shortcut in addition to one that is allowed by default. The method I suggested will let you assign a total of four shortcuts to the Action button, triggered when single-pressing, double-pressing, tripple-pressing and long-pressing it, just like the good old Home button that would let you go to the home screen by pressing it once, the App Switcher by pressing it twice, the "accessibility shortcut" by pressing it three times and Siri or whatever you could assign to it by long-pressing it. And even the Home button allowed a fairly high level of flexibility even though you couldn't customize the single-press and double-press actions at all.