Customizing the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button

You can set the Action button at the side of your iPhone 15 Pro to a variety of presets, like opening the Camera app or starting a Voice Memo. But you can also use Accessibility options and Shortcuts to make it do almost anything. Here are some examples of what you can do including launching any app, taking a photo, starting a timer, and much more.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at all the things that you can do with the Action button on your new iPhone 15 Pro. 
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So the new iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max have a button on the side. It's called the Action Button. It is there in place of the mute switch from previous models. Now you can press and hold the Action button to perform a variety of tasks. You can decide what is done when you press and hold the Action button by going to Settings and then look for Action Button. If you go in there you have a bunch of different choices. You can flip through them and it describes what it will do. By default the Action Button is going to perform a toggle of Silent Mode. So turning Silent Mode on or off. I have it set to this. Watch what happens on the phone if I press it. Now you can't just do a quick press. You've go to press and hold it for about a second. You can see at the top there it turned On Silent Mode. If I do it again it toggles it Off. 
Now next we've got Focus. So you can have it change to a Focus Mode. Look at the little menu there and you see that you can choose anyone of the Focus Modes that you have defined on your iPhone. So if I turn it On now you see it just goes to Do Not Disturb and I can turn it Off with the same press and hold. 
Next we've got Camera. Now if you use this what will happen is you press and hold and it launches the Camera App. So it doesn't actually take a picture. If we look at the menu here you can see it can go in the Camera App directly to the Photo, the Selfie section, taking a video, Portrait Mode, or Portrait Selfie. So it does directly to one of those. But then it leaves it up to you to tap the Shutter Button. In a minute I'm going to show you how to set this button to actually take a photo immediately.
Next we've got Flashlight which will turn On the Flashlight if it is Off or  turn it Off if it is On. Then we've got Voice Memo. Now unlike the Camera Modes, Voice Memo will actually start recording immediately. So I'll tap and hold and you could see there at the top it has started recording a voice memo. Very handy. I can tap and hold to have it stop. Then I can find those, of course, in the Voice Memo's app.
Next we've got Magnifier. So this will turn the Magnifier function On and now you can use the Magnifier which is really handy. You would turn it Off by going Home. 
Next we've got the most useful, by far of all the Settings, Shortcuts.You can set a Shortcut and we're going to look at that in a minute. Let's go through the rest of the Settings first. 
Next you've got Accessibility. Here there is a lot of functionality as well because you can choose an accessibility feature. So this will toggle On and Off most of these. There are tons of different useful things in Accessibility. Even if you don't need them you may actually want them at sometimes. So, for instance, you can set it to start Voiceover or start Screen Zoom. You can set it to switch On or Off voice control or Assistive Touch or Full Keyboard Access. You can quickly turn On background sounds if you like. Or Live Captions, Guided Access, and the new Live Speech feature. So here I've set it to Classic Invert. So you can see if I press and hold it will turn it On and press and hold again it will turn it Off. 
Now let's go over to Shortcuts. So Shortcuts allows you to run a shortcut. You can create Shortcuts for so many things. So, for instance, you can create a simple one just to open an app. Let's go to the Shortcuts App here and you could see I've got a whole bunch of them. I've called them all Action Button and then the name of what they do. Just so I can easily find them. But you don't need to name them that. So I've got one here called Action Button Calculator. If I look at it it just has one action in it. Open Calculator. That's all. So if I go back to Settings and I select the Shortcut for that then if I press and hold the Action Button it goes to the Calculator App. 
Another quick one you could do is to have it call a specific person. So here I've got it to call this contact right there. There is a phone number set for that. So now we'll go into Settings. I'll change the Shortcut to that particular one. Now when I press the Action Button it makes that call. 
You can also have it switch something in System Settings provided there is a shortcut action for it. So here I've got on where I'm going to use the Toggle Silence, Unknown Callers. Notice that when you bring this Silence Unknown Callers action up you can have it turn On or Off or switch to Toggle. So I've got it set to Toggle which makes the most sense. Now I'm going to go in Settings and I'm going to Set the Action Button to use that. 
Now I'm going to go in the Settings App to Phone and there Silence Unknown Callers. So you can see it is Off. Now if I were to use the button you could see the Shortcut run there at the top. It doesn't actually update the Setting in the Settings App right there if it is on the screen. But if I go in you could see it is turned On. If I go and press the button again it runs the Shortcut again and you could see that it is now Off. 
Now I mentioned about taking a photo immediately. Well, with this Shortcut you can. So you need to use the Take Photo and I've set it to the Back Camera. I've set it up here where it is not going to show a camera preview. So it is not going to bother me with that. Then the next action has to be Saved Photo to Recents. That is just a way to save it right to your Library without putting it in a specific album. So this Shortcut here will take a photo if I were to run it. If I go into Settings here and set the Shortcut for the Action Button to that then now it should take a photo if I just press and hold the Action Button. You can see it runs there. What I did is I took a photo and I can look in the Photos App and there it is. I can press and hold the Action Button again and I'll actually see the Photos App update with the new photo right there. 
I have another Shortcut here that starts recording a video. So it is Take Video and then using the back camera. I have the quality set and I have it set to Start Recording Immediately. Then Save the video to Recents. This will start recording a video and as soon as I Stop it it then appears in the Photos App. This is a little different than the Take a Photo one though. If I choose this one here and let's go to the Photos App there. Now if I press and hold it will actually show me what it is recording. When I Stop then I have to tap Use Video there at the bottom right. Now you can see it appear in the Photos Library. The whole point is though that it starts recording immediately. So it is a quick way to start recording a video and not miss a moment. 
Here's another one I think is really useful. A Timer Button. So all I'm doing here is using the Action to start a Timer. I've set it for 5 minutes. But you could set it for any amount of time you find useful. So if you always need a 5 minute timer now you've got this shortcut that will do it and then we can assign it here to the Action Button like that and now if I press and hold the Action Button, if you look at the top there, you can see it starts a Timer. 
Okay, here's one that is a little more complex. This one gets the current location and then it uses Get Details from Location to get the zip code. You can choose Street instead of zip code and get the address. Then it is also going to format Date. So there is a Format Date Action. You can set that to just have as the input the current date. So you just go to the Input Field there and make sure you select Current Date. Then you can choose the Format for the date.
Then Append to a Note is an Action. Then I'm going to put the formatted date and a space and the zip code. So pulling the values from these two previous ones here. Now when I set this up as what is performed when I press the Action Button, right here, then it should record to that Note what the current location, in this case the zip code, and the time is. Here I've got that exact note and I'll press the button and you could see it adds it there. 
Now if you want you can have the button perform different tasks in different situations. For instance, here's a shortcut that will present a menu. So I'm going to use the Choose From Menu action and I've got 3 items. Timer 5 minutes, Timer 10 minutes, and Toggle Silence Unknown Callers. Note the options below that. So for Timer 5 minutes I've got this set. For Timer 10 minutes I've got a different start timer set and for Toggle Silence Unknown Callers I'm doing something a little different. Instead of putting the Action there to actually toggle that I'm running that Shortcut I created before. So you don't have to actually define all of the actions inside of each shortcut. You can actually have, say a series of 5 different shortcuts and then have Choose From Menu and use this Run Shortcut Action here to then reach out and run one of those other shortcuts. Like a function if you are coding. Then when you run this with the Action button you would get presented with a Menu, like this, and get to choose which one you want. Or just tap away and it won't do any of them. 
Likewise, you could have something else. Like, for instance, a location based one. So in this case it is going to get the current location and get Street, rather than zip code, as a detail from that location. Then it is going to check to see if the street is, in this case a fake address 100 Road Street, and if it is then it is going to toggle the flashlight On or Off. In other words use it as a flashlight button when you're at home. Otherwise toggle the Wi-Fi on or off. So if you're away then it becomes handy as a Wi-Fi switch. 
Now you can set this up for different locations or zip codes or even cities. You can even, instead of get current location, you could just see if the Wi-Fi name is set to something. So the Wi-fi name is set to your Home Wi-Fi then use it for something because you know you're home. If It is not your Home Wi-Fi then use it for some other actions. 
So you could see there that is just a sampling of what you can do with the Action Button thanks to the ability to trigger a Shortcut from it. I hope you found this useful and that it encourages you to experiment with the Action Button. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Customizing the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button”

John Carter

7 months ago

Sorry, but I see this as a rather redundant feature. I can set widgets on the Home Screen to activate any of those features - even on my iPhone 14. So I would prefer to just keep the default setting for the Action button, which is what I use it for most often. Hence, depending on what you would use the Action button for most often determines what you would set it for.

The tips on using the Shortcuts app is the most useful part of this video. Thanks.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Customizing the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button

Comments: 3 Responses to “Customizing the iPhone 15 Pro Action Button”

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