Only two app shortcuts that you couldn’t modify were available on your iPhone’s lockscreen not long ago: a flashlight toggle and camera controls. But with iOS 18.2, you can change these shortcuts to pretty much whatever you wish. iOS 18 enhances personalization for iPhone and iPad users in a number of ways, including this little but significant modification. However, what if you still want a simple method of turning on and off your flashlight without having to unlock your phone?
With iOS 14, Apple unveiled an accessibility feature that, when enabled, lets you do things with a simple touch on the back of your phone. Tap Back is the name of the function, which is still a sleeper that is surreptitiously tucked away in your settings menu. By turning on Tap Back, you can basically create a button on the back of your iPhone that does a certain activity without taking up any room.
Once you’ve activated Tap Back, you’ll quickly see how revolutionary its extra ease can be. We’ll walk you through setting it up below so that you can launch almost anything you want with a few touches on the back of your iPhone.
How to configure the iPhone’s back tap
The process of navigating through your iPhone settings starts the same whether you wish to connect Back Tap to your flashlight, camera, or another app.
Open the Settings app on your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), then choose Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. You may now choose to use two or three touches to start your action (in this example, your flashlight). I would recommend three taps even though two is clearly quicker since it’s easy to inadvertently activate the accessibility function if you’re fidgeting with your phone.
Choose the Flashlight option (or another action if you’d like) after selecting a tap choice. There are more than 30 choices available to you, ranging from accessibility-specific features like launching a magnifier or activating real-time live captions to system options like using Siri or capturing a screenshot. Additionally, you may configure Back Tap to launch any downloaded or made shortcuts, mute your music, go back home, open the Control Center, and adjust the volume.
The iOS Back Tap configuration
Double Tap and Triple Tap are your options.
Once you’ve made your selection, a blue checkmark will show up to the right of the action. In fact, you could use this method to set up two shortcuts: one that would activate with two touches and another that would activate with three taps on the rear cover of the iPhone.
You may test out the recently enabled Back Tap function by touching the back of your iPhone after you’ve closed the Settings app. In my instance, this was done to activate the flashlight. You can also press the back of your iPhone to turn off the flashlight, but if it’s more convenient, you can simply turn it off from the lock screen.