So the new iPhone X doesn’t have a home button like older models. Apple has compensated the lack of a home button with a set of new swipe gestures and the redesigned side button.
We’ve talked about how you can perform basic actions on the iPhone X but it turns out change doesn’t always mean improvement. At least not for everyone. As a partial solution, it is possible to add a virtual home button to your iPhone X and while it may not completely replace the old home button available on previous iPhones, it’s pretty customizable thanks to all the options provided by AssistiveTouch.
How to add a virtual home button to your iPhone X
While AssistiveTouch is meant to help those who are having trouble with navigation on iOS devices, there’s so much more you can do with it, especially when it comes to simplifying button combinations and gestures.
If you want to add a virtual home button to your iPhone X, the first step is to enable AssistiveTouch if you haven’t done it already. Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility.
Tap the “AssistiveTouch” option in the Interaction section and on the next screen, enable the option at the top. A white and gray circle icon will appear on your screen.
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This will be your virtual Home button, but you might not want to see it displayed all the time. On the other hand, it can be inconvenient to revisit the AssistiveTouch Settings menu each time you want to toggle the button on or off. Luckily, there’s an easier solution.
On the Accessibility Settings screen scroll down and tap on “Accessibility Shortcut”. The following menu allows you to create a shortcut by triple-clicking the Side button for various actions. However, for the purpose of this guide, select the “AssistiveTouch” option.
It will allow you to triple-click the Side button to show or dismiss the AssistiveTouch button.
If you have multiple Accessibility shortcuts enabled when you triple-click the Side button, a menu will show all of these options and you can select one from there.
Note: It’s also possible to enable/disable AssistiveTouch from the Control Center. To do this, go to Settings -> Control Center -> Customize Controls. At the bottom of the screen, tap the plus sign next to “Accessibility Shortcuts”. This will add it to the Control Center, from where you can easily toggle it on and off as needed.
Now that you’ve set up your virtual home button, you can easily reposition it anywhere on the screen by dragging it around. Tapping it will display the AssistiveTouch menu. The default shortcuts allow you to enable Siri, open the notifications, go back to the home screen and open the Control Center.
The “Device” option provides even more actions, such as taking screenshots, locking or rotating the screen, restarting your iPhone, launch the app switcher and more. The “Custom” option allows you to perform various gestures, including 3D Touch and double-tap.
If you don’t want the AssistiveTouch menu to open when you tap the circle button, you can also set it to perform a specific action. This can be done from the Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Assistive Touch.
In the “Custom Actions” section, select “Single-Tap” to access all the actions you can assign to the AssistiveTouch shortcut and choose the one that best suits your needs.
The same section allows you to set additional actions for double-tapping, long pressing or 3D Touching the AssistiveTouch shortcut so you might want to use some of those as well.
While not in use, the gray&white AssistiveTouch icon becomes more translucent but if you’d like to make it even more invisible, tap on the “Idle Opacity” option and lower the transparency below the default 40%.
It may be easy to add a virtual home button to your iPhone X, although it might take a bit of tinkering to set it up just how you want it. Nevertheless, once you get it right, you can enjoy a practical shortcut to the actions that interest you most.
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