The iPhone X is a radical new iPhone: its front panel, first and foremost, is just a screen — a Samsung OLED display, no less. It's made of glass. It can do wireless charging. It's the first $999 iPhone, but the most stunning change of all? No home button.
When former Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone in 2007, it looked like a groundbreaking innovation, doing away with all the buttons on tired old phones and replacing them with a giant screen. On the bottom was a single "Home" button that allowed users to go back to their home screen no matter which app they were on at any given moment. It was easy to understand, it was clean and simple, and it was iconic. Since then, that button has been a keepsake of all iPhones that came afterward — until the iPhone X.
Now in place of home are gestures, a new navigation system iPhone X users are required to learn if they want to properly use their $999 device, but suppose they got sick of it and want the old home button back. Would that even be possible?
As it turns out — absolutely.
How To Enable The Home Button On Your iPhone X
On the iPhone X, swiping the navigation bar up accesses the home screen, swiping up but holding it a little accesses the multitask tray, and flicking the navigation bar sideways switches apps.
But there's a way to put a virtual home button on the iPhone so users don't have to swipe up every time they want to return to their home screen, as The Verge points out. It's actually a feature many users are already accustomed to — Assistive Touch.
Home
Assistive Touch is a feature accessed in the accessibility settings under the "General" section of iOS that puts a floating button onscreen that can be dragged anywhere. Assistive Touch contains a lot of different functions and control, but it can be configured to perform a certain task depending on various actions, such as tapping, holding down, or double-tapping.
To make it act like a traditional home button, set Assistive Touch to bring up the home screen whenever it's tapped once.
Control Center
Alternatively, users can configure it to access harder-to-reach settings.
Instead of swiping from the bottom screen like on previous iPhones, accessing the Control Center now requires swiping down from the upper right corner. Problem is, the upper right corner is quite far for most people, and reaching that far while holding the phone with one hand puts it in a precarious position. To avoid this, simply configure Assistive Touch to show the Control Center when it's long-pressed or 3D-touched.
Assistive Touch offers a bunch more features than those mentioned above, including the ability to add a secondary menu with even more options or to show the multitask tray when double-tapped.
Those who want to go the extra mile to make their iPhone X more like old iPhones can even remove the infamous iPhone X notch with an app.
Do you have Assistive Touch on your iPhone X turned on? Sound off in the comments section below!
