How to Enable a Virtual Home Button on iPhone or iPad with AssistiveTouch

Aug 16, 2018 - 7 Comments

How to enable a Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad

Do you miss having a Home button on the iPhone X? Maybe your Home button isn’t working as expected, or is broken on an iPhone or iPad? Or maybe you’d just find it easier to tap on the screen to mimic a Home button press rather than using the hardware button? You can enable a virtualized onscreen Home Button to use instead with the help of a great Accessibility feature called AssistiveTouch.


While AssistiveTouch has a huge array of excellent Accessibility features and capabilities, we’re going to intentionally limit it’s scope here to focus on creating an onscreen touch Home button on an iPhone or iPad.

How to Add a Touchscreen Home Button on iPhone or iPad

Here is how you can use AssistiveTouch to enable an onscreen Home button in iOS:

  1. Open the “Settings” app in iOS
  2. iOS Settings icon

  3. Go to “Accessibility” (new iOS versions) or to “General” and then to “Accessibility” (older iOS settings)
  4. How to enable a Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad
    How to enable a Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad

  5. Tap on “AssistiveTouch”
  6. How to enable a touchscreen Home button on iPhone or iPad

  7. Toggle the “Assistive Touch” switch to the ON position
  8. How to enable a Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad

  9. Next choose “Single-Tap”
  10. From the Single-Tap options select “Home” as the single tap action item for Assistive Touch
  11. Setting the touch Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad

  12. Drag to position the Assistive Touch virtual button, by default it’s in the upper right corner of the screen, to mimic an onscreen Home button drag it to the bottom middle of the screen, or the position of your choice
  13. Drag the Home button to the location you want in iOS

Now you can tap the onscreen virtual Home button to mimic a real Home button, it will perform the same actions as you’d expect, like returning to the iOS Home Screen from any app.

The touchscreen Virtual Home button on iPhone or iPad

Creating a virtualized Home Button with Assistive Touch works on both the iPhone and iPad, though for people wanting to use it as a digital Home button replacement it’s probably most useful on devices that either don’t have a Home button at all (like the iPhone X, and if rumors pan out all future iPhone and iPad models), or for devices where the Home button is broken and not working.

The latter scenario of using Assistive Touch to manage a broken Home button has been in use for quite some time as a workaround for users with a damaged or malfunctioning Home button, and it continues to work well for that purpose today.

By the way, if you’re enabling this setting because your Home button is broken or malfunctioning, you might also appreciate knowing how to restart an iPhone or iPad without pressing any hardware buttons, and if your Lock / Power button is misbehaving too then you can also shut down an iPhone or iPad without using the Power / Lock button and follow some other tips for managing a broken Power button on iOS devices.

How to Disable AssistiveTouch Touchscreen Home Button in iOS

Of course you can also turn off the onscreen Home button in iOS too if you decide you don’t like it, or don’t need it:

  1. Open the “Settings” app in iOS
  2. Go to “General” and then choose “Accessibility” and then tap on “AssistiveTouch:”
  3. Toggle the “AssistiveTouch” switch to OFF position

The virtual Home button will disappear immediately when you turn off AssistiveTouch.

Now you know how to enable or disable a virtualized onscreen Home button on your iPhone or iPad that you can use the touchscreen for like any other item on the screen, pretty handy!

.

Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting

7 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. Carmen Gomez says:

    Thank you so much! This video was very helpful. I was able to disabled the assistive touch on my iPad.

  2. Louise says:

    I can’t delete this button. It was on my old phone because the home button was broken and when I got my new phong today and transferred all the data it also transferred the home button. I want to delete it but I go to Accessibility and Accessibility shortcuts and Assistive touch but there is no slider to turn it off. Just a tick function which is already off. I tick and untick again but still the button remains

  3. john says:

    For software support it is crucial to state firmware version, because software change all the time.

    In the latest IOS the Assitive touch is not in General anymore.

    It is a waste of time following this advice.

  4. Jayanthi says:

    Clear explanation with screen shots. Thanks

  5. Debra says:

    Thank you, I had an update and it is not in general anymore and that is what threw me. I followed your instructions, turned phone off and back on and BAMM it was there. Thanks so much

  6. Eileen says:

    Must have been an update.
    Accessibility is now in settings.
    Do not need to go to General.

    Or maybe it is just my experience.

    Otherwise great instructions.
    Clear, screen shots 👍

  7. jim says:

    how to access settings when home button does not work

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site