In defense of the iPhone Action Button

Apple’s announcement last week that the Action Button is now on all of its iPhone 16 models, rather than just the Pro model that the button debuted on last year, was a little overshadowed by the introduction of the Camera Control button — a capacitive, tactile button for launching and controlling the iPhone 16’s camera. But don’t let that fool you: the Action Button is still one of the most powerful features Apple has added to its phones in years.

One very obvious use of the button is to connect it to the iPhone’s camera app, letting you press and hold to open the app, then press once more to take a picture. But does that mean the Camera Control button has made it obsolete? I don’t think so.

By default, the Action Button serves as a mute toggle — it did replace the mute switch, after all — that you press and hold to mute or unmute your phone. But besides that and using the camera, it can do so much more. To begin with, you can set it to do simple things (by using Settings > Action Button), like flick on the flashlight (or the torch, if you like), set a Focus Mode, or open Apple’s Translate app. With iOS 18, Apple added the ability to map it to a Control Center action or recognize a song with Shazam.

But you can go way beyond simple. For me, it’s a way to help me use my phone less. I don’t mean spend fewer hours on it — I mean it lets me cut out all the extraneous swiping and tapping that I have to do to carry things out on my phone. It’s something I’d been trying to figure out through other means, like adding Shortcuts to my homescreen, but the Action Button has been the missing part of a puzzle I’d been piecing together for years.

Now I use the button several times a day: long-pressing it to get to an option that turns all the lights off before I go to bed; selecting multiple AirPlay speakers at once in an easy-to-use menu format that waits for me to finish choosing before it streams my audio to them; connecting to my AirPods when Apple’s auto-switching feature (all too frequently) doesn’t work right.

I do all of this by mapping the button to a custom Shortcut — Apple’s powerful automations app that comes included with every iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I use a similar approach to former Verge reviews editor Dan Seifert, who wrote about the button last year. Long-pressing the button runs a Shortcut that brings up a menu of some of the most common actions I take on my phone. These options can do simple things like set my phone to silent or open the Find My app when I need to locate my keys.

They also trigger more complex actions. One of them brings up a quick form to add an appointment to my calendar, rather than having to open the calendar app to do it. And when I tap “Play Podcasts,” it brings up a second menu of all of the AirPlay targets in my house. It’s perfect for when I’m cleaning and I just want to quickly get something playing in every room.

YouTuber Stephen Robles put together a video guide for creating a system like this — and uploaded a template that you can use to get yourself started if you’d rather not begin from scratch. That said, if you do want to do it yourself and don’t want to sit through Robles’ guide, I’ve written up some basic instructions at the bottom of the page.

In a recent Vergecast episode, David said that readers of The Verge “overwhelmingly” told him they do not use the Action Button. Not everybody is interested in this sort of streamlining, and that’s fine. But after that episode, my people — the nerds who love coming up with obtuse and clever ways to use the Action Button — posted to social media about how they use it.

Here are some of my personal favorites:

This person probably used the “Open App” Shortcuts action for this, and I’m fully on board with that.

This person’s friend can just long-press the Action Button with their phone in their pocket, and it will automatically send a heart emoji to their girlfriend. All-time great use, especially if you work a physical job where your hands are always dirty and you just want your significant other to know you’re thinking about them.

This use, from a comment on the YouTube upload of that Vergecast episode, takes advantage of the fact that Shortcuts can trigger different actions based on the orientation of your phone. So this person made their Action Button a context-sensitive automation trigger. Fantastic.

It’s not that the Action Button is perfect. I still wish that Apple had added other options, like the ability to carry out other tasks by double- or triple-tapping it. But as it stands, the Action Button is the sleeper car of features — unassuming, yet more powerful than it seems at first glance.

What I’ve written here only scratches the surface. How do you, dear Verge reader, feel about the Action Button, and how have you used it? Let us know in the comments.