… what do you use them for? I have double taps to go back to home screen and triple taps to turn off the screen. Sometimes, they are annoying because they don’t always work when I tap or it goes back to home screen or turns off when I didn’t mean to tap like putting down iPhone on a hard surface. Argh! :(
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Good question! Back tapping is a worthwhile feature imho.
I ordinarily just keep my iphone on cellular data, as it’s fast enough for my needs and my service contract has more bandwidth than I need.
So for a time I set up a triple tap to turn wifi on and a double to turn it off (for the occasional large file download or sending multiple photos etc).
But as you note, it didn’t work consistently so I turned it off. (Control Center is slower than back tapping, unless back tapping doesn’t work; which was often the case, so I reverted to Control Center).
So, nothing at the moment.
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You mean data allotment, not bandwidth, right?
I suppose, Halfsmoke! The ‘quantity of data traveling over cellular’. Used to be called bandwidth, but I could be behind the times on that!
My plan on the provider website says I have 1.5 GB of cellular ‘usage’ every 4 weeks. I’m rarely over half that amount, so rarely need to use the double-triple tap on the back for wifi.
I do use the camera most days, have set up a triple tap as next experiment…
As I recall, bandwidth is a rate not an amount, like the relationship between 10 gallons per minute and 10 gallons. So on a mobile phone plan, 5G/4G/3G etc. [essentially] indicates the maximum bandwidth available to your phone while Unlimited/50 gigabytes etc. shows the maximum amount of data you can use per month before incurring surcharges.
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ETA: added “essentially” to reflect technical details in a later post
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I keep trying it and then turning it off again because of unintentional activations. I have ADHD and am a rather jittery person, and it’s very easy for my restless motions to get misinterpreted as back taps.
Then I’ll be going through Settings again after an OS update, and I’ll have forgotten why I turned off back taps, and I’ll try it again. It gets turned back off within a few hours at the most.
Back taps don’t work for me with the kind of cases I use. Specifically the pliable soft clear plastic ones. I guess too much of the “tap” is absorbed by the case material.
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Not quite. 3G/4G/5G (and 2G before that) simply describe the “generation” of the underlying mobile telephony protocols. In the LTE-based 4G/5G and in the GSM-based 2G/3G, these generations roughly correspond to certain releases of 3GPP standards documents.
5G is the suite of standards that began with 3GPP release 15 (frozen June 2018) and continues on to today.
As mobile telephony evolves, new standards are written, and when they gain enough industry consensus, the 3GPP will include them into new releases. At some point, the 3GPP will decide that the tech has evolved enough to be branded “6G”, but that will be (as was the earlier “G” numbers) a marketing reference to all the standards from some cutoff release forward.
Although there is a relationship between generations of the radio protocols and bandwidth, they are not directly related. A 3G system, for example, can provide more bandwidth than a 5G system, depending on the radio bands/channels used and the number of simultaneous channels a handset is configured to use.
And, of course, the bandwidth you can actually use on your phone depends on a lot more than the radio technology used. It also depends on the capabilities of the chips in your handset and cell site, network congestion, fronthaul and backhaul bandwidth and a host of other things, including the service level for which you’ve paid.
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I have:
- double tap: open a shortcut to add web page to my bookmarking service (Linkding)
- triple tap: open a shortcut to view the current web page in wayback machine
I have my iPhone Xs in a recycled plastic/rubber case.
I tried double-tap and had too many false activations. I prefer to use the Assistive Touch feature to create a virtual home button (Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Assistive Touch). I set one touch to be “Home screen”, two to be “App Switcher”, and three to be “restart”.
I have
• double tap for App Switcher
• triple tap for Camera
Unfortunately, it rarely works on first try (in spite of no case) and so I even more rarely attempt to use it.
I use double-tap to silence the phone, and triple-tap to take a screenshot. This is with a sturdy case on. Implementation is frequently inconsistent, but I’ve gotten used to it by now, and it works most of the time. It’s come in handy.
I don’t use back-tap that often — currently, I have double-tap for apps list and triple-tap for home, but might try some other options to see if they encourage me to use back-tap more. 
Interesting. I must have been aware of the back tap feature at one point, but I completely forgot about its existence.
If I were to use it, I’d consider the following: flashlight, lock rotation, magnifier, maybe camera.
I’m inclined to keep it turned off. I’d be worried about it being one more source of the “why the heck did my phone just do that?” phenomenon.
I use both double-tap and triple-tap to turn on Voice Control, because its dictation can edit text as well as enter it, unlike the normal keyboard mic button’s dictation, which can only enter text.
I don’t use it much anymore because Voice Control’s dictation in general doesn’t work as well as it used to, so I stick with the standard dictation unless I need editing capabilities.
Two taps: App Switcher
Three taps: Flashlight (very convenient in the dark)
At least for me the opposite is the case. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered involuntary taps. But usually, when I try to double-tap, I need to do it twice or thrice until the iPhone registers it as actual back tap (and this is without any case or sleeve).
I tried it for zoom & then I couldn’t get back to regular size 
so, no more back taps for me.
Thanks - that’s a useful data point. Given a choice between accidental activation of a feature and having to perform the action a couple of times to ensure activatoin, I definitely prefer the latter.
I prefer consistency/predictability even more, however, so I think I’ll keep the feature turned off. Our “simple” user experiences are only getting more complicated, so when settings allow, I usually disable features that behave inconsistently, excepting those that are truly critical.
Thanks again.
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