In iOS, a quick double tap on the back of your iPhone will take a screenshot. This is an accessibility feature that helps people with disabilities.
To use this feature, first enable it by going to Accessibility > Touch & Back Tap. Once that’s done, you can choose between two or three different actions that will trigger when you double-tap the back of your device.
Enabling AssistiveTouch
Enabling AssistiveTouch is a boon for iPhone users who cannot use the physical buttons due to age, illness, or injuries. It can help you adjust volume, lock and restart the device, use multi-finger gestures, or replace pressing buttons with one tap. It can also help you connect assistive pointer devices, such as wired or Bluetooth mouses and trackpads.
You can enable AssistiveTouch in the Accessibility settings menu. It can also be triggered via Siri voice commands.
To turn on AssistiveTouch, open the settings menu and select “Accessibility.” Then toggle the switch next to AssistiveTouch to turn it on. After that, a button appears on the Home screen that you can tap to launch the AssistiveTouch menu.
The AssistiveTouch menu includes many useful features and controls like notifications, device, control center, Siri, and Home. It can be used to take screenshots, employ custom gestures, invoke SOS, open App Switcher and more.
There are multiple ways to customize the AssistiveTouch menu, including reassigning different functions to each icon or removing them altogether. You can even resize the icons to increase their visibility.
Disabling AssistiveTouch
If you’ve been using the double tap screenshot feature for a while and want to turn it off, you can do so easily. You don’t even need to restart your iPhone. Just head to Settings, scroll down to General and Accessibility, and select the “AssistiveTouch” option.
This accessibility feature enables users with small hands to perform a range of useful actions on their iPhone or iPad. It works by displaying a circular button over whatever is on screen, and then allowing you to tap it to trigger a set of handy shortcuts.
The button can be used for things like taking a screenshot, swiping up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center or a variety of other useful actions. It’s a great way to save time, especially if you have to perform multiple tasks in quick succession.
However, there are a few things you should know before turning AssistiveTouch on. First, you need to ensure it’s working correctly on your iPhone and iPad.
Second, you need to understand what the button does and how to use it. You can access the button by pressing and holding the side or top button on your iPhone or the physical Home button on older devices.
Once AssistiveTouch is on, you can also customize it to your liking. This includes how it appears on the screen and a range of other settings such as its Idle Opacity.
Idle Opacity lets you adjust the visibility of the AssistiveTouch button on the screen, so that it’s less distracting when not in use. The default is about 40%, but you can adjust it as high or low as you need to.
You can also change its color, which is helpful if you’re struggling to see it on dark backgrounds. It’s best to keep the button at a relatively neutral color, such as gray or white, as that will make it easier to use.
AssistiveTouch is a great way to quickly perform many different functions on your iPhone or iPad, but it can be distracting if you have to look at it for too long. To make it less of an eyesore, you can use AssistiveTouch’s Idle Opacity to reduce the opacity of the button to about 15%.
Taking a screenshot
Taking screenshots is an important function on most smartphones. It’s used for a wide variety of reasons, including capturing an odd technical bug or a funny image that you want to share with friends.
The process for taking a screenshot on your iPhone is fairly simple. You press two buttons together and wait for the screen to flash, then tap that image to capture it as a photo.
On newer iPhone models like the X, XS, XS Max, and XR (and other iPhones that use Face ID), you can take a screenshot simply by pressing the Side button and the Home button at the same time. This action will trigger a small thumbnail image to appear in the bottom-left corner of your screen, which you can tap to open an editing mode or swipe left to save it to your photos library.
For older iPhones without a Home button, or those that have an old-school top lock button, you can still take a screenshot by pressing the Power and Volume Up buttons together simultaneously. It’s just a bit more difficult because they are physically located on the opposite side of your device from each other, and you’ll need to press them down quickly before you release them.
Once you’ve taken a screenshot, a small preview of it will appear in the lower-left corner of your screen for several seconds. Tapping this will open up the markup tool on your device, letting you edit your screengrab using a wide range of tools.
Editing a screenshot
Once you’ve taken a screenshot on your iPhone, you can edit it and share it in a few different ways. Apple’s iOS has a great tool for doing that called Instant Markup, which allows you to crop, draw, add text and highlights, and even change the overall opacity of your screenshot.
When you’re done editing the image, tap Done to save it to your iPhone’s Photos app and send it to someone else. Alternatively, you can select a specific folder to save the screenshot to and save it as a Quick Note or copy and delete it from the Files app (depending on the file’s content).
If you want to edit a screenshot with more advanced features, there are a few third-party apps available in the iTunes Store that are worth checking out. These include ScreenMaster and Blur Photo Editor.
With the Instant Markup app, you can use the pencil, pen, and highlighter tools to sketch out a line over your screenshot, or you can use the ruler and lasso to draw shapes. These tools are useful when you’re trying to obfuscate sensitive information in the screenshot, for example.
You can also use the magnifier tool to enlarge a certain part of your screenshot. This is especially useful when you’re editing a screenshot that contains a lot of text.
