{"id":206995,"date":"2026-01-27T10:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/action-button-shortcut-what-you-should-set-your-iphone-to-do\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T10:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:05:09","slug":"action-button-shortcut-what-you-should-set-your-iphone-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/action-button-shortcut-what-you-should-set-your-iphone-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Action button shortcut: What you should set your iPhone to do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/iphone-action-button-shortcut\">Action button shortcut: What you should set your iPhone to do<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/iphone-action-button-shortcut\">https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/iphone-action-button-shortcut<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-01-27 10:01:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.cultofmac.com\">www.cultofmac.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I finally figured out the perfect set of controls to assign to the iPhone\u2019s Action button. I created a shortcut that cleverly combines the two controls I want to use it for.<\/p>\n<p>The Action button can toggle the flashlight, mute audio, toggle an accessibility feature, open the camera, start translation, run any shortcut of your choosing and more. It\u2019s so open-ended that figuring out what to use it for can trigger decision fatigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t panic \u2014 I discovered what you should use the iPhone\u2019s action button for. And I\u2019m sharing the shortcut, which combines two actions into one elegant system, so you can use it, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>What to do with the iPhone\u2019s Action button<\/h2>\n<p>The iPhone\u2019s Action button, which replaced the familiar Ring\/Silent switch on the iPhone 15 Pro before spreading to the rest of the iPhone lineup, is remarkably powerful. It\u2019s also most likely underutilized.<\/p>\n<p>By default, you can press and hold the Action button to toggle Silent mode on and off.\u00a0However, it can do much more. (And to be honest, the Ring\/Silent switch made less sense over time \u2014 many iPhone users now wear an Apple Watch, which sends notifications to the wrist, meaning the iPhone is effectively always silent.)<\/p>\n<p>If you own a recent iPhone and miss the Ring\/Silent switch, the easy option is to simply keep using the Action button for that function. But if, like me, your phone is always on mute, that\u2019s wasting a perfectly good button. I worked out a better option.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The best Action button Shortcut\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LF_LQ3JFsh4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\"\/><\/p>\n<h3>The two things I need to do all the time<\/h3>\n<p>Before I upgraded to an iPhone 16 Pro, I had a whole year to think about what I might use the Action button for. I had two ideas:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Add an item to my shopping list.<\/strong> I often think to myself, \u201cOh, I\u2019m running low on this item, I should add it to my shopping list.\u201d Unfortunately, I literally never do. And then I get stuck making pasta sauce that doesn\u2019t have any Italian seasoning or Parmesan cheese, and at that&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/iphone-action-button-shortcut\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Action button shortcut: What you should set your iPhone to do https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/iphone-action-button-shortcut Publish Date: 2026-01-27&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206996,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Best-Action-Button-Shortcut.jpg.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[74,124],"class_list":["post-206995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone","tag-iphone-15","tag-iphone-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206997,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206995\/revisions\/206997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}