The iPhone Duo more famously lacks Face ID, but it's also lost the Action Button. If that matters to you, it matters a lot, but there is something you can do.
Not to keep you hanging, the solution to losing the Action Button on the iPhone Duo is to create a near equivalent. You can replace one of the iPhone's regular lock screen icons with a control or a Shortcut that mimics the Action Button.
True, the real Action Button still has the same peculiar design it did back in 2023, where pressing it does nothing except pop up a notice telling you to press longer. You can't emulate that with a Shortcut or a control, but you can do pretty much everything else.
The basic method
Emulating the Action Button varies slightly depending on quite what you want it to do, but in every case you start with this:
- Press and hold on the iPhone's lock screen to edit it
- Tap the Customize button that appears
- Tap on the minus sign next to the Camera icon at bottom right
- Now tap on the plus sign that appears where that icon was
- Choose from the list of controls that appear
- Tap the Done button
- Tap in the center of the screen to leave editing
The key part here is which control you choose. It can be one specific thing like turning on a Focus Mode, or it can be to run a Shortcut.
L-R: press on the lock screen to customize; replace the camera icon; choose a new control instead.
Whichever you choose, when you now pick up your iPhone, a single tap on that bottom right lock screen icon will perform the action you've chosen.
You could as easily pick the bottom left icon instead of the right one. But by default the right icon opens the camera and you can also do that by swiping the lock screen to one side, or pressing the Camera Control button.
There are also other spaces on the lock screen where you can place widgets, but still that camera icon one seems the most expendable.
If you do this and you choose any control bar running a Shortcut, you're done. You've got your fake Action Button, as best as it can be done on the iPhone Duo or any iPhone.
Plus this on-screen button will show the icon of whatever control you've chosen. If you instead have it run a Shortcut, the button will only show the generic Shortcut icon.
Shortcuts are better
Just as with the real Action Button, you get more benefit by having it run a Shortcut. This way you have one button that does many things, for instance turning on the torch, switching on a Focus Mode, and running an app.
L-R: opening the Shortcuts app, saying what you want to do, seeing Shortcuts create what you need.
Or most usefully of all, you can have one Shortcut be a menu for any or all of the other Shortcuts you have.
Now from iOS 27 onwards, it's easier than ever to tell your iPhone what you want to happen. Because you literally tell it:
- Open the Shortcuts app
- Tap the plus sign
- Write a sentence describing what you want
That sentence could be, for instance, "Show me a menu of several different Shortcuts I can run." This is a particularly bad idea if you have, for instance, 710 Shortcuts, but great if you have 11.
If you do have many Shortcuts, though, that means you're used to creating them. So you can now make one that, for instance, displays all of the Shortcuts you've put into a folder.
A simple shortcut that opens a folder of other Shortcuts and presents them in a menu.
Or I have it so that pressing either my actual Action Button or this new on-screen one, changes depending on where I am. It's really the same Shortcut but it first checks what Wi-Fi network I'm on, and offers me different options depending on the result.
Limitations
There is nothing the Action Button does that you cannot replicate with a control or a Shortcut. But this is still emulating a physical button with an on-screen one, and there is a difference.
You won't be able, for instance, to pick up your iPhone and press the button without looking.
But since the iPhone Duo does not have an Action Button, this is the best you can do.
