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The Hidden Gesture for Switching Between Apps on Home Button iPhones

Jan 24, 2020 07:31 PM
Instagram and Twitter apps open on a smartphone screen.

I love my iPhone 8 Plus, but the allure of modern iPhone gestures is sometimes more tempting than I care to admit. I imagine many of you with a home button iPhone feel the same. What if I told you, however, that your iPhone is capable of iPhone X-like gestures? In fact, you can use a gesture to switch between apps. Welcome to the future.

The gesture itself actually requires a bit of force. Why? It's a 3D Touch gesture. If you press hard on the left edge of your display, you'll see the window "pop" slightly. Push down again to fully open the app switcher (GIF #1), or pull the switcher open yourself (GIF #2). You can also switch to the last open app by making a full swipe after the initial pop (GIF #3).

From left to right: pop into app switcher; swipe into app switcher; swipe into previous app.

From left to right: pop into app switcher; swipe into app switcher; swipe into previous app.

It's not quite as fluid as switching apps on an iPhone X, but it works well. Surprisingly, Apple removed this feature with the release of iOS 11. While iPhone X users had nothing to worry about when they got their new phones, we home button users were so frustrated with the omission that Apple brought the gesture back in iOS 11.1.

Cover image and GIFs by Jake Peterson/Gadget Hacks

The next big software update for iPhone is coming sometime in April and will include a Food section in Apple News+, an easy-to-miss new Ambient Music app, Priority Notifications thanks to Apple Intelligence, and updates to apps like Mail, Photos, Podcasts, and Safari. See what else is coming to your iPhone with the iOS 18.4 update.

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