Apple Bytes: 
Back Tap turns the entire back of your iPhone into a giant touch-sensitive
button that you can double or triple tap to trigger specific functions on
your phone. There’s a good chance that you haven’t noticed it yet. Apple
slipped the settings for Back Tap into its Accessibility menu.
Credit: theverge.com
Your iPhone got a new button recently, and you may not have even noticed.
No, Apple didn’t sneak into your house and secretly superglue a button onto
your smartphone. But it did release iOS 14, the latest version of its iPhone
software, which includes a feature called Back Tap. Back Tap adds a
fascinating new “button” to your phone that blurs the line between hardware
and software.
Back Tap turns the entire back of your iPhone into a giant touch-sensitive
button that you can double or triple tap to trigger specific functions on
your phone. There’s a good chance that you haven’t noticed it yet. Apple
slipped the settings for Back Tap into its Accessibility menu.
Its intended purpose is to give users more options for interacting with
their devices. Most of Back Tap’s options reflect that, with settings to
open the app switcher, notification menu, or control center; scroll through
an app or webpage; trigger Siri; or take a screenshot.
But Back Tap also ties into Apple’s incredibly robust Shortcuts app, which
means you can effectively make those new buttons do almost anything you can
imagine. It’s a fascinating kind of button: entirely invisible to the naked
eye, completely nonfunctional until it’s enabled through software, but can
be tasked to open, interact with, or accomplish nearly any task on your
smartphone with just a quick tap.
That software customization is key. It’s easy to imagine a world where Apple
limited Back Tap to just a few preset options focused on making the iPhone
UI more accessible. But by opening it up to Shortcuts, the company turned
Back Tap into a tool of limitless creativity, letting users come up with
their own ways to take advantage of the new button on the back of their
devices.
It’s not just Apple. Google experimented with a similar, albeit more
limited, feature for Android 11, although it didn’t end up making the final
cut. Some enterprising developers have since replicated the feature for any
Android device.
This is also a level of control that’s almost unheard of for iOS devices.
Imagine if Apple let you remap the side button (for Siri and Apple Pay) on
an iPhone 12 to, say, launch Google Assistant or send a preset text message
to your partner. It’s practically unthinkable.
It works well, too. The software is responsive, and whatever Apple’s doing
to differentiate between an intentional tap and just regularly holding your
phone, it works well. It's particularly useful for triggering Control Center
to quickly toggle system settings.
Back Tap repurposes the existing sensors and hardware on your iPhone with
software to create a new hardware interaction that wasn’t available before.
It’s a new physical button users can interact with, but one that’s almost
completely free of Apple’s limitations.
Physical buttons, of course, are the most direct form of interaction. It’s
why Samsung insists on a bespoke Bixby button and why Netflix pays for a
spot on your Roku remote. And while Apple may not quite be willing to give
up control of the physical buttons on your iPhone, Back Tap, with its almost
button, is the next best thing.
Credit: theverge.com
