7 Ways To Switch Apps On an iPhone

iPhone users switch apps constantly. But are you using the best app switching method for your needs? See a variety of ways to switch apps and their advantages.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you different ways that you can switch apps on your iPhone.
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Now when you're using your iPhone you're using just the app that you see on the screen. So, of course, you often need to switch apps. There are several different ways to do this. First let's look at the simplest and most versatile. That's to simply return to the Home Screen and choose a new app there. 
So here I am in the Calculator App. Now getting to the Home Screen depends on which type of iPhone you've got. If you have an iPhone with a Home button you just press the Home button. If you don't, if you've got one with Face ID then you're going to see this bar at the bottom of the screen. What you need to do is tap and Drag up and you'll end up back at the Home Screen and from there you can choose a different app. 
Now if that's the only way you know how to do it, that's perfectly fine. It works! But there are ways to shave off a few seconds by using more sophisticated techniques. One is the App Switcher. So if you do this same thing and tap and drag from the bottom but instead of quickly going up as far as you want you kind of stop in the middle there and notice you've got apps here to the left. Release here and now you're using the App Switcher. The App Switcher shows you your current app to the right and then other apps and you can swipe to drag between them. You can actually switch to any app you want as long as you can see it. So if I wanted to switch to the Messages App here I can now just tap on Messages and it brings that up. This has the advantage of not taking it all the way back to the Home Screen. You go right from one app to another. It also has a big advantage in that it shows you the content, not just the app's themselves. So, for instance, I can look here and see the content in Safari. This is very useful in situations where you don't remember which app you were using, you just remember the content. For instance you may be reading an article. Was that in the News App? Was it in some social media app? Maybe it was in Safari. You can now see the content and not really worry so much about the app itself and then go specifically to the content, not the App. 
Now you can also do this if you've got an iPhone with a Home button. The trick is to double-press the Home button and then it brings up the App Switcher. 
Now a third way to go between apps only works if you do have Face ID. No Home button. Instead of swiping up from the bottom you're going to go Right. So if I go to the right there it goes to the previous app. You can keep swiping, like that. This is a really handy way to quickly get to the previous app. It doesn't work as well as the App Switcher for getting to an app several back as you have to keep swiping. 
Now most articles and videos will stop there and show just those two or three different ways to switch apps. But there are more ways to do it. Two of them use the accessibility functions on your iPhone. So we're going to go to Settings here. Under Accessibility we're going to look for Touch. In here we're going to turn on Assistive Touch. Let's look at the options here. You've got a single tap, double tap, and long press. You can set these to do various things. So, we can set a single tap to, for instance, Go Home. This will take us to the Home Screen. But notice you can also choose the App Switcher here. So with Assistive Touch turned On and set for a single tap going to the App Switcher now you'll see this circle that you can move around on the screen and place around any edge. Now, we've set it to one tap. If I tap it, like that, you can see it brings up the App Switcher. So you can do a single tap as the App Switcher and double-tap, for instance as the Home Screen. 
This is particularly useful for those that don't do well with the tap and swiping gestures on the iPhone. Now there are plenty of people who use them expertly. But also there are plenty of people that have trouble with them and it sometimes is easier to have that Assistive Touch button on the screen and just be able to do a simple tap to get to one of these. 
You could also set these up to go to what is called the Menu. So you choose Open Menu here. Then the Menu itself will bring up six buttons and you can customize those. So this one here is set to the Home Screen, for instance. I can change this one here to go to the App Switcher and then when I tap on this it instead brings up those buttons that I can now access the App Switcher from one of those buttons but maybe Home from another. 
Also note another option here is to instead of going to any of those is to choose Spotlight. If you select that then you can get to Spotlight which you can get to it always from the Home Screen by swiping down and then it will show you suggestions which usually include your most recently used apps. So it works really great as an app switcher. But the problem is it doesn't work inside of an app. You can't get to Spotlight with a swipe down in the middle like you can on the Home Screen. But with Assistive Touch now I've got this button here and I can tap on that and now it brings up Spotlight even from within another app. 
Now instead of Assistive Touch another Accessibility feature that will help you switch apps is Back Tap. So this is at the bottom of the Touch Section of Accessibility. You can set Back Tap, the double tap or the triple tap, to go to Home. Have it go to the App Switcher or you can have it go to Spotlight. So you can use anyone of those three options with either a double-tap or triple-tap on the back of your iPhone to quickly switch between apps using one of those methods. 
Now, of course, another option for switching apps is simply to use Siri. If you're already using Siri for other things then you can use it to jump from one app to another. If you go into Settings and you go to Siri & Search here's where you would customize whether it is Listening for key works there or use some other way to activate Siri. Then you can use Siri to jump from one app to another. So here I am in the Notes App. If I then activate Siri I can go to another app. (asking siri - Launch calculator). 
Now there's one more method I want to show you. But this doesn't work to go to just any app. It will help you in some situations to back to the previous app. Now sometimes when you're in an app it switches you to another app automatically, say to view a piece of content. Now let's say, as an example, you're in Safari and you are viewing some content. But you could also be viewing content in a social media app or an email message, anywhere. There's a link that goes to another app, in this case The App Store app. So when I tap here it goes to The App Store. Now maybe if you weren't paying close attention you might not have noticed that you switched apps. You are no longer in Safari. You're in The App Store app. Well, there's an indicator to actually show you that. If you look at the top left you'll see this little button that takes you back to the previous app. First you use this as an indicator that, yes you did indeed switch apps. You're no longer in Safari because it actually says go back to Safari here at the top. But also you can tap on this and it will actually take you back. It will take you back to whatever the app was. So, for instance, if you're in the Mail App here and you tap on a link in a Mail message, notice how you can go back to Mail at the top left. A lot of times when we want to switch apps we're just doing this. We're switching back to the app we were previously using before we tapped on a link. So looking for that in the upper left hand corner is really handy. 
So every method I've shown you here has its advantages and disadvantages. For instance, going to the Home Screen allows you to go to apps you haven't even used recently. Just as easily as going to the previous app. Going to the App Switcher allows you to go back several apps and view the content of each app. So you recognize where you want to go by content not necessarily by the app name. Swiping quickly on the bottom is great for going to just the previous app or maybe two or three back. Using the Accessibility functions are great if you're not really good at these swiping gestures. Now with Siri you don't even need to tap the screen at all. Then looking for the Back button at the upper left hand corner allows you to easily get back to the previous app.
So I hope you find one or more of these methods useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “7 Ways To Switch Apps On an iPhone”

Jim Terrinoni

3 months ago

So many options so little time. How you clearly condense all this info is amazing. You definitely know “process.” Keep up the GREAT work.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Arnold Brown

Great video. Very useful, especially when on a call and information is needed from an app while maintaining the conversation.

Thanks

Johnv

Very helpful, thank you.

Dominique

3 weeks ago

I am pretty well versed in the iPhone but I always learn something new from you. Thank you

7 Ways To Switch Apps On an iPhone

Comments: 5 Responses to “7 Ways To Switch Apps On an iPhone”

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