Last year I purchased an iPhone 15 Max, and for the first time, I was presented with a new customisable button on the side of my phone. For an entire year I struggled to find a purpose for it.
Do I keep it as a mute switch? I didn't really ever use the previous mute switch. Do I make it launch a fancy Shortcut? Maybe that could have been clever, but I've stopped using Shortcuts. Or how about I make it a launcher for something like the camera app? Well that sounded good, but it doesn't work on press, you need to hold it down, so it always felt slower than swiping left on the lock screen.
Well, I've now got an iPhone 16[1], and because of the new "Camera Control" button on the side of the device, I now have a way to launch (and control) the camera pretty quickly. So that removed one option in my head.
And then it came into my head, it should be to toggle the torch. I have a baby now, so I don't always want to turn the main lights on, so sometimes easier to just switch the torch on quickly.
Maybe that's a sign that sometimes too much customisability isn't always the easiest to deal with. Or maybe it's just me. Either way, it literally took me a year to find a use for the Action Button.
Not Plus, not Pro, not Max, just 16. ↩︎