Smartphones are extremely valuable devices, full of all sorts of useful functions and tools for everyday life. However, unless you have enough time to spend digging through every menu and description of your smartphone, some helpful little functions and tools may not be obvious, such as this one neat trick discovered by a TikTok tech blogger.
TikTok user Techgirljen posted about a lesser-known function of the prominent Apple logo that’s present on every iPhone, and pointed out that it had a secret hidden function.
Anyone who has an iPhone 8 or later can turn on a function called ‘Back Tap’. This essentially turns the Apple logo on the rear of the iPhone into a button.
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In order to enable this function, you need to go to the Settings menu and scrolls to Accessibility. From there, select Touch and then Back Tap. There are two options, Double Tap and Triple Tap. These can each be assigned a function.
To demonstrate how it worked, Techgirljen assigned Double Tap to the Flashlight, and Triple Tap to the Camera app. She then demonstration this in action, showing how the apps were activated with just a few taps of the back panel.
Not every user is quite as pleased with the function. One user on Reddit described the Back Tap feature as inconsistent. “I cannot get it to work when I want, but it randomly turns on the torch on certain occasions. I never found a proper way to tap the phone back so that it consistently works.”
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Another user replied saying that the Apple logo isn’t quite the correct location to hit on many iPhone models, saying: “It’s great once you get used to it, I only use the double taps for a screenshot tho. Found the best place and most consistent is tapping the area southeast of the camera housing with my index finger.”
The tap placement was then further confirmed by a third Reddit poster, who said: “Tapping southeast of the camera area was the secret for me. Before reading this Reddit posting, I tried double-tapping my iPhone 13 Pro near the Apple logo 100 times in a row, and it registered only twice.”
Though this hidden function could be very useful for people to access certain apps such as the flashlight or camera in a hurry, it does seem to need some experimentation before you can find that sweet spot.