The home button on your iPhone may seem like it’s the only way to get around your phone, but you can still use the device without it. In fact, if you have an iPhone 7 or a later model, your phone doesn’t even have a home button at all. Don’t worry—you can still find your way around without this vital piece of hardware! Just follow these seven steps and you’ll be using your iPhone as efficiently as ever in no time.
Open up your Settings app and scroll down until you see a list of options on a page labeled General. Tap that, then click on Accessibility. In here, there should be an option for Voice Control; tap that and toggle it off. You’ll never accidentally call anyone ever again. Sorry about that. Step 2 – Learn Where Your New Buttons Are: Now that you’ve turned off voice control, head back to your home screen and swipe right once or twice (depending on how many pages are in your dock). Here’s where things get different. Instead of swiping left to go back one page, you’ll now swipe right. That takes you back one page—and also brings up Siri if she’s enabled. If not, just keep swiping right until you get all the way over to another screen full of apps. To open any app from here, just tap it with your finger (or two fingers if it’s a larger app). And finally, there’s no more home button at all! So instead of pressing that, you’re going to press either your power button or volume buttons.
Use 7 Easy Steps to Using Your iPhone
Step 1 – Turn Off Voice Control
They both do basically the same thing: bring up Apple Pay if it’s set up on your phone, take you back to whatever screen was last displayed before you pressed them, and show quick access to volume controls when they’re pressed quickly. When in doubt, try pressing both buttons together; that will almost always work as well. Step 3 – Enable Assistive Touch: This is actually kind of fun—but we recommend only doing it after you’ve gotten used to using iPhone without a home button because otherwise, it can make everything pretty confusing. So first open up Settings > General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch and flip on Assistive Touch by tapping its switch so that the green box turns white.
Step 2 – Set Up Assistive Touch
One of your other options is Assistive Touch, which you can use to bring up a home button without actually having one. Here’s how it works. Tap Settings>General>Accessibility and scroll down until you see Assistive Touch. Enable Assistive Touch by tapping on it. You should now see an icon that looks like a circle with three dots in it—this is what you’ll use as your new home button.
Step 3 – Change Your Default Apps
The home button isn’t necessary for certain tasks. By default, opening web links or photos will open them in Safari and Photos app respectively. If you prefer Chrome or a different program, you can change these options so they open when you tap on a link or photo instead of Safari and Photos. In iOS 9 and earlier, go to Settings > Safari > Open Links Then and choose one of your other apps. For iOS 10, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button and toggle Open Links last iPhone with the home button. The next time you click on a link in an email or text message, it will automatically open in your preferred browser. You can also set up shortcuts for actions like making phone calls and sending texts—just add shortcuts by going to Settings > Phone/Messages/FaceTime (depending on which version of iOS you have) and then tapping Default Apps under Phones & Messages.
Step 4 – Take a Screenshot
Taking a screenshot on your phone is easy. If you are using an Apple device, press down on both volume buttons at once. If you’re using an Android device, press down on both volume buttons and then hold onto one of them. The screen will flash white when it takes a picture. The image will be saved in your photo gallery under screenshots.
Step 5 – Lock Screen Rotation
Once you’ve found a comfortable orientation for your iPhone, you can lock that orientation on your screen. From here, no matter how you hold or flip your phone, it will always show in landscape mode. To do so, go back into Settings and tap General > Accessibility > Lock Rotation. Now when you turn your iPhone sideways, it will stay that way until you change it again.
Step 6 – Use Siri Shortcuts
Siri Shortcuts are one of my favorite new features in iOS 12 for iPhone. They enable you to create custom shortcuts that can be invoked by Siri through voice commands. You’ll find a dedicated section for creating them under Settings -> Siri & Search -> My Shortcuts, where you can edit and delete old ones, or create new ones from scratch. The latter is what we’re going to do here. First, tap on + at the bottom right corner, then choose any action that can be performed within an app (e.g., Send a message…). Next, select any other actions you want to be included in your shortcut (e.g., …to Mom), then tap on Done when done.
Step 7 – Learn iOS Gestures
As long as you have your home button, you can be just fine navigating iOS. But once you don’t have it, things get a little trickier. Fortunately, Apple has taken away much of the hassle with an awesome feature called gestures. With gestures enabled, you use different swipes and taps on your screen to perform certain tasks. For example, if you want to access Control Center from anywhere in iOS, simply swipe up from the bottom of your screen (this gesture is enabled by default).
If you need help learning how to do everything else using gestures—like accessing Notifications and Control Center, or closing apps—make sure to check out Apple’s own tips here. You can also find plenty of other helpful guides online that explain each gesture individually. Just remember that gestures are only available when you’re not using 3D Touch features like Peek and Pop. You won’t see them otherwise. So if you’re stuck without a home button, try 3D Touching something first before resorting to gestures!
Conclusion:
If you’re tired of accidentally hitting the home button on your iPhone, you can disable it and use the device without it. The process of getting rid of the home button on an iPhone is fairly simple, and once you’ve done it, you’ll be surprised at how easy it makes things like navigation and screen access while using your phone. Here are seven steps to getting started.
