Double-press iPhone Home Button To Reach Favorite and Recent Contacts

contacts on ios 8 multitasking screen

Favorite and Recent Contacts on iOS 8 Multitasking Screen.

A new gesture trick that comes with iOS 8 is included in the Home button double-press action.
Now, along the multitasking option that zooms-out your iPhone’s screen and unveils the open apps, you also have an array with your Favorite contacts, followed by the Recent ones.
So, besides switching in-between apps or killing them in order to save battery, you can now also tap on a contact and select one of the available actions: Phone call, Message conversation or FaceTime call.
If you reconsider, tap the contact again and the conversation menu closes. This adds another way of reaching your contacts, thus making your iPhone interaction even more pleasant.

Yes, this new feature can also be disabled. It’s turned on by default but you can deactivated it from Settings.

How To Add Contacts To Favorites
In order to have your most important contacts available at the top of the multitasking screen, even if they aren’t figuring as your most recent contacts, you need to add them as favorites. This can be done in many ways. Here are the two common ways:
1. From the Phone app, tap on ‘Favorites’ and hit the ‘+’ icon. Search the desired contact and tap on ‘Add to Favorites’. You’ll be prompted to select which action should be added to favorites, mobile phone, FaceTime, FaceTime audio or any other available phone number. Select, the one you prefer, it doesn’t matter too much, because you’ll be prompted with 3 options anyway, when accessing the contact from the multitasking screen.
2. Using Spotlight search, find the desired contact, open it and tap on ‘Add To Favorites’. If you wish to delete a contact from the Favorites list, access the list via the Phone app and swipe-left on the contact’s name. Tap on ‘Delete’ to confirm the erase.

Disable\Enable Contact Display in App Switcher
This feature can be turned on or off by browsing Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Show In App Switcher. Here you can tick or untick Phone Favorites and/or Recents to set up this feature the way it suits you best!