Your iPhone Has Secret Buttons You've Never Pressed: Back Tap, Action Button and Focus Tricks Worth Learning

There's a decent chance you're reading this on an iPhone with capabilities you've never once used. Not because you're not techy — because Apple buries its best tricks in Settings menus nobody opens. Before you spend £1,000 on a new handset, spend ten minutes learning what your current one can already do.

Back Tap: The Invisible Button on the Apple Logo

Since iOS 14, the back of your iPhone has been a button. Double-tap or triple-tap the Apple logo area and the phone performs whatever action you've assigned. It's off by default, which is why most people don't know it exists.

Find it under Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. The genuinely useful assignments:

• Torch — double-tap in the dark instead of fumbling for the Control Centre
• Camera — triple-tap to snap a moment you'd otherwise miss
• Screenshot — no more button gymnastics
• Shazam — identify whatever's playing in a pub within two seconds

One warning for commuters: Back Tap can false-trigger in a tight coat pocket or a phone armband. Torch-on-in-your-bag-all-day is a great way to meet 3pm with 4% battery.

The Action Button: One Press, Your Whole Routine

If you've got an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, that little button above the volume controls is far more than a silent switch. Out of the box it does torch, camera, voice memo and a handful of others — but assign it to Shortcuts and it becomes whatever you want.

Travel is where this earns its keep. Set up a shortcut that, on one press: switches your SIM to a local eSIM, turns on low power mode, opens your boarding pass, and sets a Focus that silences everything except your airline's app. You can build this in the Shortcuts app in about five minutes, and it turns the Action Button into a holiday mode switch.

Focus Modes: Not Just Do Not Disturb With Branding

Focus modes get written off as glorified Do Not Disturb, but the clever bit is that each Focus can have its own Home Screen, apps and notification rules. A Work Focus can hide TikTok entirely; a Sleep Focus can grey out everything except your alarm.

The trick most people miss: Focus filters. Under each Focus's settings you can control which Safari tab group, Mail account and calendar is active. Set a Travel Focus that only shows your trip folder in Maps and your holiday email alias in Mail, and your phone genuinely behaves differently depending on the mode.

Accessibility Settings That Aren't Just for Accessibility

The Accessibility menu is where Apple hides features everyone should use:

• Reachability (Settings > Accessibility > Touch) — swipe down on the home bar to pull the top of the screen within thumb's reach. Essential on Pro Max models.
• Reduce Motion — makes an older iPhone feel noticeably snappier by cutting animations.
• Per-App Settings — bump the text size in one app without changing it everywhere.
• Live Captions — real-time captions for any audio playing on the phone. Brilliant for noisy train carriages.

Squeezing Life Out of an Ageing iPhone

None of these tricks cost a penny, and together they do something valuable: they delay the upgrade. A 2020 iPhone SE with Back Tap, a tuned Focus setup and a fresh battery is a perfectly capable device for years yet. The most economical repair is the one you never need — and the cheapest upgrade is the one you talk yourself out of.