How To Bring Back The Home Button To The iPhone X

Believe it or not, iOS 11 packs a handy little trick that can bring the Home button back to the iPhone X! I’m not talking about the physical key, of course, however a digital Home button can be permanently displayed on the iPhone Ten’s OLED display. And it’s not there just for the sake of design, but it also includes important commands and functionality usually handled by the actual Home button.

Why would I bring back the Home button?.. you might ask. It’s true, Apple did a good job with replacing all actions usually available via the iPhone’s Home button. They were either replaced by the Side Button, and other gestures and combinations. However, the App Switcher shortcut for example might prove itself difficult to perform with one hand by an user with a smaller palms. The Control Center gesture is also impossible to perform with a single hand, unless you use Reachability.

5 Steps To Bring Back The Home Button On iPhone X
So, if you want to try to control the edge-to-edge display iPhone with a virtual Home button, here is what you have to do:
Enable AssistiveTouch
1. Unlock the iPhone X and tap on Settings from the Home screen.
2. Browse for General -> Accessibility -> Assistive Touch and enabled the AssistiveTouch feature. A floating Home button appears on the screen, usually near the right margin!
3. Touch, hold & drag it to a preferred location. Usually somewhere near to the bottom border so that you can easily reach it, single-handed.
Tip: Tweak the digital Home button’s visibility with the help of the Idle Opacity setting. The lower the percentage the more invisible the button becomes when not in use. This helps it from not obstruction your view when you don’t need it.

Tweak Home Button Menu
4. In the same AssistiveTouch settings menu tap on Customize Top Level Menu and set what actions and functions you want to trigger when you tap the virtual Home button. By default the available shortcuts include: Home, Control Center, Notifications, Siri, Device and Custom.
5. Tap the “+” icon available in the bottom-right corner of the screen to add more icons. The Top Level Menu can host up to 8 icons. Each icon can be tweaked with one of the actions mentioned above, or listed here: Lock Screen, Rotate Screen, Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, Gestures, Accessibility Shortcut, Shake, Multitasking, Screenshot, Lock Rotation, Pinch, Double Tap, SOS, Analytics, Restart, Speak Screen.

Configure Home Button Shortcuts

6. In the AssistiveTouch settings menu, scroll for the Custom Actions section and tweak the three available shortcuts:
– Single-Tap: The Open Menu function is assigned by default. You can bypass the above menu and use only three shortcuts. In this case you should set this gesture to trigger the back Home command, to reflect the same action available on a physical Home button.
– Double-Tap: can be set as a command for opening the App Switcher.
– Long Press: is normally used to wake Siri. But the virtual assistant is already easily triggered with a long-press of the iPhone X Side button. The Notification Center could be a good pick.
– 3D Touch: gesture can be assigned as a shortcut for Control Center, because this also menu that’s harder to enable with a single hand on the iPhone X.

Related: You might also be interested in how to trigger the iPhone X Accessibility shortcut!