The home button on the iPhone X has been replaced by the home indicator. It’s a thin on-screen bar that is basically a soft-button. It is omnipresent at the bottom of your screen and it recognizes various new gestures that the phone supports. The home indicator does a lot more than the home button ever did. In fact, it’s often easy to accidentally execute a gesture that you didn’t mean to execute. This happens with hard buttons to and a lot of iPhone X users take several accidental screenshots everyday when they attempt to lock their phone. The home indicator does a lot but a far more basic function that it performs is that it takes you to the home screen on iPhone X.
Home Screen On iPhone X
The home indicator isn’t a button so users will likely wonder how you go to the home screen on iPhone X once you have an app open. Tapping the indicator does absolutely nothing and swiping brings up the app switcher. The home indicator is how you get to the home screen on iPhone X but you need understand the exact gesture in order for it to work.
To go to the home screen on iPhone X, tap and drag the home indicator upward. The app will shrink and disappear into the home screen. Recall how on other iPhone models, you swipe up on an app in the app switcher to remove it. This gesture is the same except it returns you to the home screen. If you release the home indicator mid-way, you end up in the app switcher.
Conflicting Gestures
The way users interact with their phones has changed with iPhone X. Gestures do more than just go back or forward in an app and your entire screen is basically a touch pad and that’s not behavior that long-time iPhone users are familiar with. Here’s a quick reference for the four gestures that you’re likely to mix up;
Swipe up and right: Switch to the next app
Swipe up and left: switch to the previous app
Swipe up, and release when your finger is in the middle of the screen: open the app switcher
Swipe up and release when the app disappears: go to home screen on iPhone X
It’s going to take a little getting used. Any accidental gestures that you execute are mostly because the iPhone X screen is incredibly fast to respond to touch input. Perhaps it might have been a good idea if Apple had allowed users to customize the size of the home indicator or the speed of these gestures considering it’s teaching users a brand new way to interact with the device.
