Activate iPhone X Reachability with a flick of the thumb

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gestures iPhone x
Your thumb will get a workout now that the home button is no longer around to do all the work.
Photo: Apple

Here’s a great Reachability tip for iPhone X users. It’s so neat that even if you find Reachability pointless, you’ll love it. Or at least, you’ll love how absurd the gestures are to activate it.

What am I talking about? Let’s just say that if you’re a close-up conjurer who specializes in card tricks, then you will have no problem with this iPhone X tip. If you’re a normal human, it might take a bit of practice.

You don’t need to hate Reachability any longer

Reachability is the feature that slides the display partway down the screen so you can reach the top of the current app (or home screen) with your thumb. It was introduced when iPhone screens got bigger, so folks could keep using the iPhone one-handed without having to adjust their grip.

https://www.reddit.com/mediaembed/7fls63

It sees to be a feature that splits users. Some love it, and use it all the time. Others don’t see the point. After all, the old way to invoke Reachability — a double tap on the Home button — takes longer than just repositioning the phone in your palm. You will, however, have to turn on Reachability by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reachability.

Use this gesture to activate Reachability on iPhone X

That’s changed with the iPhone X. No longer do you need to tap the Home button to bring the screen within reach of a stubby thumb — because there is no Home button. Instead, you grab the little home bar at the bottom of the screen and slide it up, as if you were entering the app-switching view that shows your apps as a stack of cards. But instead of letting go of the “card,” you flick it back down, as if you were flicking a card off the bottom of the screen. That’s it. You are now in Reachability. Here’s a video from Redditor eat_midgets:

PSA: There’s a much more fun way to invoke Reachability on iPhone X (video) from apple

Bonus tip: Open Control Center while Reachabilitizing

On iPhone X, Reachability brings some extra utility. After activating it, you can swipe down from the top corner of the screen to get to Control Center, just as if you were doing the same gesture in the iPhone’s top corner in regular display mode. That’s a pretty neat tip, although the amount of flicking and swiping needed to get there might put off the less patient user.

All the new iPhone X gestures sometimes make it seem like you’re playing a Super Mario game. No matter how many new ones you find, there’s always something new to discover. Maybe a plain old easy-to-use button is better-suited to a phone …

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