While Apple is set to bring a new iPhone sans a Touch ID-equipped home button, you may not want to upgrade your iPhone 6s anytime soon and might be looking for an alternative to the physical controlling. Here, we are listing two simple alternatives to the home button of your iPhone 6s to help you feel fresh right with your old mate.
Virtualising the physical experience
Apple has provided a virtual home button that sits right on top of your home screen. Called AssistiveTouch, the built-in feature is mainly designed to work as a lifeline in case the physical home button on your iPhone has become unresponsive due to extensive usage. It comes preloaded on all the available iOS devices, alongside the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
To start working with the touch screen home button, you need to enable the AssistiveTouch option that is available under the 'Accessibility' settings tab. The easiest way to find the option is to use the Settings search bar, which is available since the release of iOS 9 back in September 2015.
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The AssistiveTouch option brings a white-colored circular key to your iPhone's screen that can be used for gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, multi-finger swipe or 3D Touch, or to use Siri. The feature is originally designed to help people with motor skill impairments comfortably operate their iPhone or iPad.
You can customise controls within AssistiveTouch and access basic iOS functions such as Notification Centre, Control Centre, Triple-Click or SOS. Furthermore, 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s can even add Lock Screen functionality to the accessibility feature.
Utilising pressure sensitivity
If you think the AssistiveTouch option is quite common among all iPhone users nowadays, you can use 3D Touch as a home button on your iPhone 6s. The iPhone 6s was the first iPhone with 3D Touch support -- and is perhaps the only iPhone that carries a physical home button and the pressure sensitive 3D Touch-equipped display.
Apple has not just brought 3D Touch and the physical home button together but has also provided a concealed control on the left corner of the iPhone 6s' display that doubles up as a home button. You need to press the corner area with a little deeper pressure to begin the action. This pops up the multitasking screen that helps you quickly switch between apps or quite any of the apps running in the background. The same gesture can also be used to directly to go the home screen by sliding your finger from right to left on the screen.
The two alternatives highlighted here can give you a crisp feel on your dated iPhone 6s. Also, you can deploy the software-based options to protect the physical home button.
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