iPhone: tapping the back triggers anything

Your iPhone has an extra button — hidden somewhere you'd never expect: the back. The feature is called Back Tap, and most people don't know it exists, even though it's been in the phone for years. With two or three taps of your finger, you can launch anything from the flashlight to a custom shortcut.

A typical scenario

You're holding grocery bags in one hand and, in the other, a phone whose screen just went dark on a pitch-black parking lot. Reaching for the flashlight button on the lock screen means shuffling things between your hands. With Back Tap set up, you just double-tap the back of your phone — even through a case — and the flashlight turns on, without you ever having to unlock the phone.

How to do it

1. Go to Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap.
2. You'll see two options: Double Tap and Triple Tap — each can trigger a different action.
3. Choose an action from the list: screenshot, flashlight, mute, opening Control Center, launching a custom shortcut from the Shortcuts app, and more.
4. The feature responds to taps even through a regular case — you don't need to take the phone out.
5. Test the action right after setting it up, so you know how hard and exactly where to tap — the sensor responds to rhythm, not the force of the tap.

The best tools

• Back Tap (built into iOS) — free, works on newer iPhones with nothing extra to install.
• The Shortcuts app — combined with Back Tap, it lets you trigger an entire sequence of steps, not just one predefined action.
• Third-party apps that extend Back Tap — for anyone who wants to assign more than two actions at once.

What you get out of it

• Time: faster access to actions that would otherwise require unlocking the phone and several taps through a menu — roughly one to two minutes a day for people who use the flashlight or screenshots often.
• Convenience in worse conditions: works even with your hands full or wearing gloves, when precisely tapping small icons on the screen is hard.
• A hidden extra feature with no third-party app: nothing extra to install, just reconfigure a phone you already have.

Pro tip

Reserve the double tap for your most common action (flashlight or screenshot) and the triple tap for the rarer but useful one — like launching a shortcut that drops you straight into focus mode. You'll get more use out of the combination than out of just one.