Since the very first iPhone, Apple has featured an on/off mute switch above the volume buttons. That all changed with the iPhone 15 Pro, and every iPhone since—the mute switch was replaced by something called the Action button.
The idea is simple: Instead of a switch, you have a button you press and hold for a second (to avoid accidental presses in your pocket or bag) to mute or unmute your iPhone. But of course, being a button, it’s far more flexible than the mute switch. Just hop into your Settings menu to select a different function for your Action button.
Here are all the things you can do with your Action button.
Action button: Built-in options
Open Settings and tap on the Action button menu to change what it can do.
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Silent Mode: It’s the mute switch, in button form! Just press and hold to toggle between mute and un-mute.
Focus: Enable the focus mode of your choice. By default, it brings up a menu of all your Focus modes, but you can select one (like Do Not Disturb) to always activate.
Camera: Launches the Camera app, and you can select whether you want it to go directly to Photo, Selfie, Video, Portrait, or Portrait Selfie. Once in the Camera app, it acts as a shutter button.
Visual Intelligence: Starting with iOS 18.4, an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16 (including the iPhone 16e) can set the Action button to trigger Visual Intelligence.
Flashlight: Turn on or off the flashlight (camera flash).
Voice Memo: Pressing the Action button will immediately start recording a voice memo, without launching the Voice Memos app. You’ll see it in the Dynamic Island, and another press stops the recording.
Recognize Music: Uses Shazam tech to listen to the music playing around you and identify it.
Translate: Listen to and translate spoken dialogue. You have to first set your desired language in the Translate app.
Magnifier: Launches the Magnifier accessibility feature, which can greatly magnify objects and text, and identify what it’s looking at.
Controls: Instantly trigger one of the Control Center controls. You select a single Control Center control first, and then the Action button triggers it. Certain kinds of Control Center controls are not available.
Shortcut: Launch one of your Shortcuts just as if you were doing it from the Shortcuts app. This can be a very powerful feature, see below.
Accessibility: Enables or disables an Accessibility feature, like color inversion, AssistiveTouch, Conversation Boost, or Live Speech.
No Action: Essentially disables the Action Button, in case you find yourself accidentally triggering it all the time.
Action Button: Use Shortcuts to do more
The capabilities of the Action button have been steadily expanding since its introduction with the iPhone 15 Pro, with iOS updates adding new options at a steady pace.
But if you want to be a real power user, you’ll learn to use the Shortcut option. This opens up a limitless world of possibilities for your Action button.
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At a minimum, it can let you add a function you wish was there. For example, I like that you can trigger a Control Center control, but what I want to do is open the Control Center without fiddling with the sometimes awkward corner-swipe maneuver. Well, I made a shortcut that is one action long: Show Control Center. Setting my Action button to launch that shortcut, and presto! Now I have a button that opens Control Center at any time.
But you can go so, so much deeper. Jason Snell wrote about how you can make the Action button perform different actions based on different parameters, like phone orientation. If your phone is upright (portrait) launch the flashlight. If it’s landscape, enable the Do Not Disturb focus mode.
Federico Viticci has a project he calls MultiButton, in which your Action button runs one shortcut if you just press it once, but if you press it a second time within a few seconds it runs a second different shortcut instead.
Others have used Shortcuts to pop up a menu of common actions that varies depending on the time of day, day of the week, location, and much more. Want your Action button to do one thing at home and another thing when you’re out? Just make a shortcut that first checks if it’s connected to your home Wi-Fi and performs one action if it does, and a different action if it’s not.
Shortcuts is a powerful tool once you learn how to use it, and having a button on the outside of your iPhone that can trigger any shortcut you want is a game-changer.
