iPhone 16 Pro Action Button + Camera Control + Lock Screen Customization = Life Altering

[parseckadet]

Ok maybe life altering is a bit strong, but I am loving how much I can customize all the things I can do without even having to go to my home now. I’m coming form a 13 Pro, and I knew I’d be able to do a lot with the Action Button, but the Good Idea Fairy just was’t visiting me enough until I actually had it. I can now do all of the following from my Lock Screen:

• Of course, view date and time
• View current weather
• View charge state of my watch
• Open Home app
• Open Magnifier (I‘m at the age where my eyes are just starting to get worse, but not enough to justify glasses yet)
• Open Camera app (Camera Control)
• With the Action Button I can:
  • If I’m in Driving focus at home between 5AM and 9AM on a weekday, get directions and traffic to work
  • If I’m in Driving focus at work, get directions and traffic home
  • If I’m in Travel focus, toggle Airplane Mode
  • If I’m in Work focus ask which of the following time tracking actions I want
    • Reset and Start Stopwatch
    • Pause Stopwatch
    • Resume Stopwatch
    • Stop Stopwatch (pause and reset)
    • Prompt for how many minutes to start a timer for
    • Pause timer
    • Cancel timer
  • If none of the above
    • If it’s daytime toggle Silent Mode
    • If it’s night toggle flashlight

What REALLY makes a lot of these useful is the Dynamic Island as well. For all my time tracking tasks, seeing the stopwatch/timer dynamically at the top is super helpful. This is all already a ton of functionality from just the Lock Screen and I’m still thinking through ideas for the Action Button in certain scenarios. Additionally, I have the phone go in and out of silent mode automatically when entering/exiting certain focus modes, another piece of functionality that wasn’t possible with the old switch.

I’ve really thought the iOS updates have just been kinda meh the last couple of years, but for whatever reason having the 16 Pro has been a catalyst event for me so that everything just clicked in my mind. Even after WWDC this year I wasn’t really that excited about the lock screen and control center customizations that are new in iOS 18. I don’t know, I guess this is a situation where the sum is greater than the parts.

 

[1096bimu]

oh dear god, I do not want to memorize a list of what my action button does in each of my 5 different focuses, and also keep track of what focus I am currently in.

Also this has been raised from Android even in the early days, if you are able to do everything in the lock screen, then you should just not have a lock screen. The whole point of a lock screen, is so that you can't do anything from the lock screen.

iOS opening up customization and allowing people do do all kinds of ugly horrible customization is the worst thing Apple did in recent years.

 

[The Doctor11]

Are you pulling a specific traffic report that’s being read out loud or is it just maps and directions?

 

[The Doctor11]

oh dear god, I do not want to memorize a list of what my action button does in each of my 5 different focuses, and also keep track of what focus I am currently in.

Also this has been raised from Android even in the early days, if you are able to do everything in the lock screen, then you should just not have a lock screen. The whole point of a lock screen, is so that you can't do anything from the lock screen.

iOS opening up customization and allowing people do do all kinds of ugly horrible customization is the worst thing Apple did in recent years.

It’s not even really memorization, it’s just situational awareness that leads you to
instinctively know what the button does at a given time.

You should have a simple Lock Screen because that’s the point of it is wildly silly. And if you don’t like the customization or think it’s ugly the best part is you won’t even know it’s in your phone if you don’t use it.

 

[parseckadet]

oh dear god, I do not want to memorize a list of what my action button does in each of my 5 different focuses, and also keep track of what focus I am currently in.

Also this has been raised from Android even in the early days, if you are able to do everything in the lock screen, then you should just not have a lock screen. The whole point of a lock screen, is so that you can't do anything from the lock screen.

iOS opening up customization and allowing people do do all kinds of ugly horrible customization is the worst thing Apple did in recent years.

One, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Two, I fail to see any security concerns with starting timers or turning on the flashlight.

Are you pulling a specific traffic report that’s being read out loud or is it just maps and directions?

Just directions in Maps, that takes traffic into consideration.