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Shouldnt the 3D Touch 'Quick Actions' menu be customizable?

nikhilnagaraj24

nikhilnagaraj24

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 14, 2010
97
104
I have been an Apple user for a long time and I have been an Android user for a long time too. I have seen best of both worlds. So this thread is not to bring out any hate on anyone, but a genuine question(conern) I have with 3D touch.

We saw the stock Apple apps(for now) have quick actions when you force press on the icons on the homescreen. For example, when you force press on the Mail icon, the top option is 'Open Inbox'. Isnt that option unnecessary? I mean, I can just touch the app icon normally and the inbox opens up. I dont have to force press on it. There are similar actions on other apps that bother me too.

Something similar inside the Mail app. You force press on an email and swipe to left or right to delete it. I can currently do it with just regular swipe on my current 6 plus anyway. Why would I force press it to do it?

If the menu is not customizable by the user, then didnt Apple just lose 1 valuable space where they could have had a more meaningful action than just open the app, considering they only have 4 actions on each app?

I think 3D touch and quick actions have great potential to turn into something super useful when 3rd party developers start incorporating them, but at this point, these little things seem to be redundant and counter productive. What do you guys think?

I am sorry if there is already a thread discussing this exact thing.
 
1. Quick actions in the stock apps aren't customizable, but some are static and some are dynamic. For example the email ones are static, while messages and phone show your recent contacts to jump quickly into a conversation.

2. Open Inbox is necessary yes. Often when you open Mail it goes to your last read message. This quickly takes you to the top level inbox.

3. The point of the peek in mail is to preview the message without having to lose context of the inbox. The quick actions are just an extra bonus. BTW - swiping left deletes or archives and swiping right marks as read or unread. These actions will follow what you've customized for your mail swipe shortcuts.

4. Developers can allow you to customize quick actions. They have either static or dynamic slots. They could use dynamic slots and let the user choose what goes there.
 
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maka344 said:
No. Set by the app developers - sadly. This is not a Google phone.
Click to expand...

Developers can allow users to customize the quick actions. It's up to them to enable it. When a developer uses Dynamic quick actions, they can be set to whatever they (or the user) wants.
 
maka344 said:
No. Set by the app developers - sadly. This is not a Google phone.
Click to expand...

This is the correct response.

Apple decides how you can use the OS functions and you will like it, or are wrong about your opinion since Apple is perfect.

/s

Does Apple think that enabling customizability such as this (along with a few of the many other ways to customize akin to Android) will overwhelm the user? I don't understand why they don't allow any customization beyond the bare minimum. Or do they truly believe that the user does not need nor ought to want it?
 
I'm confused. So developers can allow users to customize or not?
 
Rogifan said:
I'm confused. So developers can allow users to customize or not?
Click to expand...

I believe what they're saying is an app developer can allow you to customize things with their app. But developers can't give you access to modify the behavior on other apps. So the developer for 1Password can add custom actions for his app. But he can't modify Mail, Messages or Facebook.
 
MEJHarrison said:
I believe what they're saying is an app developer can allow you to customize things with their app. But developers can't give you access to modify the behavior on other apps. So the developer for 1Password can add custom actions for his app. But he can't modify Mail, Messages or Facebook.
Click to expand...
Right. Seems like it's still unclear if this possible or not. If it is, why wouldn't Apple also do it with stock apps? For instance, what will we get with the Music app? I don't listen to Beats 1 so a quick launch for that is meaningless to me.
 
It's a v1 feature. It hasn't even come out yet - seeing as they've had this in mind for "multiple years" as Ive has confirmed - I'd imagine like Apple Music, and other features on the phone, it'll get fleshed out. They're introducing it, so i'd imagine they will take some feedback on how to improve on the initial version. Feedback to the 3rd party devs will affect the options for 3d Touching the apps on the home screen
 
You can't even change the toggles in control center after three versions. I doubt we will get a setting to change this any time soon. Speaking of which, I hope they add 3D Touch to Notification Center. It would be handy for switching between control schemes. Alternatively you could force swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the alternate control scheme.

Does anyone know if you can 3D Touch the camera icon in Control Center to access the menu for selfies, video, etc? If not then that sucks. I use control center to access the camera more than anything else.
 
Don't know, but curious too - it seems 3D Touch pushes a user to have the most used apps not in a folder, and on home screen/dock to best utilise the shortcuts.
 
Zwhaler said:
This is the correct response.

Apple decides how you can use the OS functions and you will like it, or are wrong about your opinion since Apple is perfect.

/s

Does Apple think that enabling customizability such as this (along with a few of the many other ways to customize akin to Android) will overwhelm the user? I don't understand why they don't allow any customization beyond the bare minimum. Or do they truly believe that the user does not need nor ought to want it?
Click to expand...

Baby steps. They slowly introduce enhancement to features. Nothing wrong with that. If they released too many options and customizations at once, two things would happen... quality would be lower, and user experience would be compromised due to users being confused by "all the options". Apple strikes a balance between power users and less-knowledgeable users.
 
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Rogifan said:
I'm confused. So developers can allow users to customize or not?
Click to expand...

They can.
For example an app like Whatsapp could let you chose whether quick action can send a message to your most recent chats or to a small group of contact.
Eventually we'll have choices, but 3D touch is quite new, the majority of users don't have it so it is not something developers spend much time.
I guess iOS 10 will introduce even more gestures and 3D touch will become an essential part of the iPhone user experience in a few years
 
There are changes and additions to Force Touch with 9.3 that is due soon so you would suspect iOS10 would take it further again.
 
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