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Gix1k

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
3,399
1,059
The beauty of that slider was to mute phone quickly and effortlessly. Mute should ALWAYS be an action there. Any and everything else should be a double press or something. Plus now I have to learn a haptic feel when phone is in my pocket to know if it’s muted or not.
 

zach-coleman

macrumors 65816
Apr 10, 2022
1,023
1,724
The beauty of that slider was to mute phone quickly and effortlessly. Mute should ALWAYS be an action there. Any and everything else should be a double press or something. Plus now I have to learn a haptic feel when phone is in my pocket to know if it’s muted or not.
Mute has always been completely useless to me. I would love a second action but I do not agree one should always be set to mute.
 

Gix1k

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
3,399
1,059
Mute has always been completely useless to me. I would love a second action but I do not agree one should always be set to mute.

Can you explain useless? You never walked into a meeting, quickly mute. Go to a school, class, church, dinner, graduation, movie….literally anything that you need to mute your phone with literally no thought. That switch action, up/down could be done in any situation and you’d know immediately what was happening.
 

OVOElias

macrumors regular
Jun 10, 2015
101
109
Miami, FL
Can you explain useless? You never walked into a meeting, quickly mute. Go to a school, class, church, dinner, graduation, movie….literally anything that you need to mute your phone with literally no thought. That switch action, up/down could be done in any situation and you’d know immediately what was happening.

Useless as in he probably always has his phone on mute, as most people probably do 😝
 

Banglazed

macrumors 601
Apr 17, 2017
4,831
8,530
Cupertino, CA
I find myself using the camera more often to quickly snap a photo than the mute switch. I hardly use mute other than in theater or some social event. I have my ringer volume on the lowest so it’s not disruptive.
 

powerbook911

macrumors 68040
Mar 15, 2005
3,961
330
I don't want to give up mute either, so it's not particularly helpful to me. I don't mind that it changed from the slider though. This way works fine for me. In fact, I think I prefer it.

Maybe someday they will add a second action.
 

deleon

macrumors member
Apr 17, 2010
49
33
But why camera? There’s two ways to access that. Just asking
For me, I use the action button for selfie camera and of course the Lock Screen has the other way to access the main camera. This way I can quickly access either way of using the cameras.
 

PegasusTenma

macrumors 6502
Sep 24, 2014
392
349
Can you explain useless? You never walked into a meeting, quickly mute. Go to a school, class, church, dinner, graduation, movie….literally anything that you need to mute your phone with literally no thought. That switch action, up/down could be done in any situation and you’d know immediately what was happening.
Everyone’s situation is different, but in my case I take out the brand new iPhone from the box, switch the mute button on and it stays like that until the next iPhone I buy. I still get vibration notifications on my apple watch.

so having that button do literally anything else is great for me, for example.
 

maratus

macrumors 6502a
Jun 12, 2009
701
273
Canada
I set it up to launch Pro Camera, because I enjoy photos that actually look like photos, and not overprocessed plastic trash. However, I pixel peep like a mf and I also expect my phone to outperform medium format Fujifilm GF system.

Do I wish that there were double tap and single tap configuration options? Hell yes. I’d configure double tap to launch another custom camera app, and a single tap will be a shortcut to randomly crappost on macrumors.
 

Supermallet

macrumors 68000
Sep 19, 2014
1,746
1,346
Or assign multiple actions to it depending on whether it’s face up or face down… https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/09/22/current-action-button-shortcut
I love the idea behind these shortcuts, but I hate that if you choose to map the action button to a shortcut (or any action that isn’t explicitly the camera action in the settings), you lose the functionality of the action button as a shutter button in the camera. I wish there was a setting I could toggle to tell the phone to always treat the action button as a shutter button in the camera app, regardless of what the action button is mapped to outside the camera app.
 

cyanite

macrumors 6502
Sep 28, 2015
309
377
But why camera? There’s two ways to access that. Just asking
Neither of them work reliably for me, especially when it has to be quick. One problem is that the always in screen looks like the Lock Screen, but you can’t swipe for the camera. Another is that the swipe has to be pretty precisely sideways in my experience.

Can you explain useless?
For me it’s because I have an Apple Watch and always (except some special cases) have my phone on mute.
 
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nawoo

macrumors regular
Feb 3, 2008
170
119
Action button is awesome. I set it to youtube app so i can easily access watch youtube anytime i want.

Maybe i should set it to Reddit as well.

If i'm travelling, i will set it to Translate.
 
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boss.king

macrumors 603
Apr 8, 2009
5,893
6,189
Can you explain useless? You never walked into a meeting, quickly mute. Go to a school, class, church, dinner, graduation, movie….literally anything that you need to mute your phone with literally no thought. That switch action, up/down could be done in any situation and you’d know immediately what was happening.
You don’t need to put your phone on mute if it's always on mute already.
 

MrPaperTrain

macrumors newbie
Jul 23, 2011
17
131
Leicestershire
Like everyone else here, my phone is on mute most of the time. For me, the action button is a good replacement that gives me more control over my phone. I’ve set it to an action menu with some of the commands I use on a regular basis. I wouldn’t call it innovation, but a nice thing to have on an iPhone.

IMG_0024.jpeg
 
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