My First Phone Action Button: What Do You Use Yours For?

Hardware
21

I have a shortcut which opens a menu allowing me to:

  • Add an OmniFocus Task
  • Open the OmniFocus Inbox
  • Add an action to Due
  • Open the Settings App
  • Add a location entry to Day One

It’s really handy.

Here’s a link to it

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6b537d5a92db4d14bb4e70e30e555605

2 Likes
22

I use a shortcut to run three tasks.

  • If the iPhone is in portrait orientation, it opens my daily notes in Craft
  • If the iPhone is face down, it activates on silent mode.
  • If the iPhone is in landscape orientation, it launches the BlackMagic camera app.

I wrote about it quite a while ago. You can read the article, if you want a similar set up:

3 Likes
23

While I don’t own one with action button, I think I’ll use it to take screenshot. I take screenshot on a daily basis and having a button to do so would save me countless of fingers acrobatics.

2 Likes
24

Ooh, that’s a good idea! Mine is currently the silent switch but about the only times I use it is to reverse an inadvertent press.

25

To quickly turn on DO NOT DISTURB when going into a meeting, church, etc.

2 Likes
26

That is a good idea for meetings. I use a location-based focus mode for when I arrive and leave church.

1 Like
27

I set my action button to orientation lock so that I can quickly view videos in landscape and return to portrait orientation when I am done.

2 Likes
28

Hmmm, that is also a good idea. Thanks.

29

I’ve thought about using the action button to enable DND for situations like church, but it would have to be a shortcut that enables it but doesn’t disable it, due to toddler on lap. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
30

I prefer to turn on DND & Silent Mode manually, before entering church. But I have a repeating reminder set for 12 noon Sunday to turn them off. :grinning:

1 Like
31

You can take my approach and just leave it in silent mode 100% of the time!

3 Likes
32

I had hoped to use the Action Button to toggle audio playback while the phone is in my pocket, but it doesn’t work for me. Does the button only work when the phone detects that it’s not in a pocket?

33

Mine launches ChatGPT in voice mode however when I went overseas last month, it was set to Translate and that’s possibly the most I’ve ever used it! I need to up my Action Button game.

34

For a long time I had it launch Remind Me Faster for quick natural language input of reminders. These then pulled across into OmniFocus4. It worked seamlessly, a really quick and efficient way to get reminders/tasks noted down and into my Inbox.

More recently however, I’ve had it set to launch the Perplexity Voice Assistant! Which at the minute is the Siri I always wanted…