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Become a Six Colors member to read exclusive posts, get our weekly podcast, join our community, and more!Use Shortcuts to make your Action Button more useful
Last year, Apple introduced the Action Button to the iPhone 15 Pro, and leaned hard into its use as a button to take pictures. This year, though, the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro both have a new dedicated Camera Control button. So what’s an Action Button—also now on the iPhone 16!—to do?
While the Action Button can be assigned numerous tasks, including setting a Focus mode and toggling the flashlight on and off, I can see Apple struggling with ways of making the Action Button seem less than an afterthought, overshadowed by the new Camera Control.
For example, Apple has suggested on a few occasions that the Action Button is a bit of a chameleon. It can turn on the flashlight at night, but toggle Do Not Disturb during the day, for example. Or it can turn on the flashlight when your iPhone is held horizontally, but launch an app when held vertically!
This all sounds clever, but unfortunately, Apple hasn’t actually added any functionality that lets users easily assign different tasks based on time or orientation. If you want to know how to do that sort of thing, you’ll need to use Apple’s Shortcuts app to get it done.
I know Shortcuts is intimidating to a lot of people, so here’s a very simple guide to creating a basic Action Button shortcut with behavior that varies based on some specific parameters. (For more, much more on this concept, check out Federico Viticci’s MultiButton project.)