Hands-On Apple 238 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
All right, do me a favor. Grab your iPhone, reach behind it, and give it two taps. Boop, boop. Did anything happen? If something did, well, then you don't need to watch this episode. But if something didn't happen, I've got something to show you. Buried in your accessibility settings is a feature that turns the back of your phone into a programmable button. You could tap twice for a screenshot, three times for the flashlight or whatever you decide. It's been hiding there since iOS 14, and most people have no idea it exists exists.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:32]:
So let's fix that. Stay tuned. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands On Apple. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at the Back Tap accessibility feature. This is. You know, I don't like to use the term hidden when I'm referring to accessibility features, because it's not that they're hidden.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:09]:
And for many people who need these accessibility requirements, they're definitely not hidden. They are where they're supposed to be and you can find them. But I would say hidden in the minds of most people, it's there. And maybe you've even been to the pages before, but you haven't quite locked into what's possible. So this is the thing to understand when it comes to back tap. It's like a button, but not really a button if you on your phone. Let's head over to iOS to take a look at this. If you launch the Settings app, you head into accessibility, and from here you go to touch, and then you scroll down until you get to Back Tap.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:53]:
Well, now you're here. With Back Tap, you are able to choose a trigger for each of these types. We've got a double tap and a triple tap. So it's actually kind of two buttons back there on the back of your iPhone, not just one. And what's kind of cool about Back Tap is there isn't any physical mechanism, right? By that, I mean it's not that there's like a secret capacitive button back here. No. The accelerometer and the gyroscope both work together to sense the vibration of your taps as you hit the the back of the phone and then convert it into an action. Now, in order for you to be able to use this on your phone, you do need an iPhone 8 or newer.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:36]:
That means a device that's running iOS 14 or later. So, honestly, if you're watching this, the chances that you qualify are pretty good. And what's nice is that it doesn't really matter for the most part where you tap on the back of the phone, as long as you're tapping on the back of the phone and you do it with intention. So a double tap is in this case because I have the notifications and everything disabled, it's not showing the banner for you, but it'll show you a banner. And me tapping back there does indeed. Aha, There we go. That back tap came through and we are able to see that it is working. So you, depending on a case or what device you wear, what you might have on your device, that will make a difference on what kind of tapping you are able to do.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:31]:
So how do we choose what our back tap does? Well, you'll notice I already have a. This is why I wanted to talk about this because I was reminded of it. I already have a setting for double tap, but I want to show you what's built in before we go with these custom options that I've set up because there are quite a few. So in order to not confuse things, we'll go to the triple tap and you'll see that by default none is selected. The second option is accessibility shortcut. And so with these, these are going to be things like magnifier zoom, in some cases turning on the It'll depend on what you have selected as your choices for accessibility. It will either pop up a screen of accessibility options if you've selected multiple choices for your accessibility shortcuts, or it will just do the one that you have set up now. Alongside that, there are also options for device like treating it as the action button or treating it as a double light.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:32]:
Press a light press. That means on your side, on your camera control the camera control button itself Home Lock Screen Screenshot Shake Flashlight Volume down, volume up. The accessibility section lets you actually choose from many accessibility options. Scroll will let you scroll up and down. That's right. You could do a double tap on the the back of your phone to make your phone scroll down and then a triple tap to make it scroll back up. Shortcuts. We'll talk about that in a moment.
Mikah Sargent [00:05:02]:
That gets very powerful. Essentially you can run any shortcut from it. And then system which lets you launch the app switcher, activate Apple Pay, Launch the camera, launch the Control center, your front camera. You can even have it do things like turn on mute functionality or restart the device. That's not necessarily one that I recommend setting up. Type to Siri Dark Mode Visual Visual Intelligence. All of these are available to you as your back tap shortcut. Now, again with mine, I wanted a way at night to be able to.
Mikah Sargent [00:05:39]:
As I was laying down, I'm always listening to an audiobook. I fall asleep to listening to audiobooks as I'm laying down. What ends up happening is I put my phone onto the charger, and then I remember you haven't set your sleep timer yet. Well, the sleep timer needs to be set, right? And so with this back tap functionality, I don't need to reopen my phone, launch the Audible app, go in. No. All I have to do, boop boop on the back of my phone, and then it automatically launches or it starts my sleep timer for me. You can do so much here, like setting double tap for the camera option and then triple tap for volume up. And so that means that boop, boop, double tap launches the camera.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:21]:
Boop, boop, boop, triple tap takes a photo. Right. Kind of cool. Now, one thing that's important to understand about this is it doesn't make use of the haptic engine. It's kind of upsetting because it would be nice if your phone sort of tapped back at you when you tapped to let you know. But you did see that banner come up on the screen, and you do have the option to turn off that banner if you don't want it running. Let's talk about what we can do next. So now you know that a double tap could, for example, restart your phone.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:53]:
Again, I don't recommend that. Triple tap could scroll down on an article so that you didn't have to keep your. Maybe it lets you keep your other hand free and you. I can't think of a reason why. If you do have access to both hands, but if there's a reason why, then perhaps that is something that you could do. Now, how can we make this even more powerful? Back tap is great on its own, but shortcuts make it incredibly powerful. In fact, that's the way that I got it to work with Audible and setting my sleep timer. When you set this up, if you assign a shortcut to a tap, you can launch apps that aren't even built into the action list.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:37]:
So one way is that it could identify a song. In Shazam, for example, you could automatically start a voice memo when you want to. You could trigger a smart home scene with a double tap or a triple tap. All you do is build a shortcut, and then in this menu, you choose that shortcut. So if I tap on triple tap and then I choose shortcuts, I can see an option that says, don't forget with do Open upcoming event, Create multiple events with fantastical Shazam and save Share my week in Music Interactive Task, Browse favorite subreddits. These are all different options. So I could, for example, start Claude Voice from a double tap or a triple tap. It's essentially another action button on your phone.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:21]:
But you may have an iPhone 8 that doesn't have an action button. And so this is your first one. This is your option to have technically kind of two action buttons with that double tap and triple tap. It's pretty neat stuff. So let's talk about what we can kind of round things out with. First and foremost, I've got homework for you if you'd like it. Some folks have written in to say they enjoy the little tasks. So I will tell you that what you can do is just set up a back tap action that you'll actually use.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:52]:
I recommend one that a lot of people will use, which is a screenshot on double tap. A lot of people use that and really like it. You know, if you're feeling ambitious, maybe make a shortcut like Open voice memos or Open Shazam or one of the custom options that it'll show to you, and then assign that one to triple tap and then click. Really live with it for a week. Really try to remember that it's there. I think that's where the double tap can help, the double tap screenshot, because a lot of people seem to click with that. And then you remember you've got these double tap actions and then you'll go, oh, yeah, I've also got that triple tap. It's the lowest effort way to make your iPhone, you know, kind of feel more custom.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:26]:
It's something you could show your friends, and it's something that is just really a cool way to do more than you might expect with your phone. The last thing I want to say about this, some caveats. There are chances for accidental activations. When this feature was first announced and when it started to get popularized with the introduction of shortcuts that resulted in, especially in early days, it activated way more than you'd want it to over time. I feel that the requirement for back tap to trigger is much more. You have to be very direct about it, and that has made it less sensitive, which is good in this case. We want it to not do a bunch of false positives, and that has improved. But there is still an opportunity that you'll get that.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:21]:
So I recommend not setting up things that are too dire or can make a huge difference on your phone, like restart with a double tap. Maybe save that if you want to set it up for the triple tap, which requires even more accidental movements movement to trigger than a double tap would. In any case, if you have questions, thoughts, concerns, etc. Email me Micahit TV is how you get in touch. And of course, don't forget about Club Twit at Twit tv. Club Twit. All right, that does it for me for today. Email me HOA TV or micahit TV with your questions and I'll be back next week with another episode of Hands on Apple.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:01]:
Bye bye.
