Ode to the Home Button
On Wednesday, Apple officially unveiled the iPhone 16e , the spiritual successor to the iPhone SE. While the second and third generation SEs borrowed the design language of the iPhone 8, this new iPhone looks exactly like the iPhone 14. This decision brings a lot of benefits, but Apple also did something pretty radical: it officially disabled the Home button.
With the release of iPhone 16e, no iPhone or iPad currently sold by Apple comes with a Home button. (The iPod Touch was killed off long ago.) It’s certainly the end of an era, and I come not to bemoan the Home button, but to praise it. Let’s take a look at the life of Apple’s Home button: what it did right, what it did wrong, and where we go from here.
A Brief History of the Home Button
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007 , much attention was paid to its “giant” touchscreen, which is how Jobs described the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display. But while touch controls certainly grabbed everyone’s attention, it wasn’t the only unique feature of the iPhone that received acclaim.
Here’s what Jobs said when he first addressed the Home button: “And there’s only one button on the front. We call it the Home button: [It] takes you home, no matter where you are.”
And at that point, that’s all the Home button did. Do you want to exit the application? Click the Home button. Welcome home.
But this simplicity did not last forever. Very quickly, simply pressing the Home button to go home was not enough: users expected more from their smartphones, and Apple had to adapt.
One of the first non-home functions of the Home button was taking screenshots. Anyone who’s used an iPhone with a Home button knows how it works: you press the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time, and voila: screenshot. (The functionality of modern iPhones with Face ID is similar, but now you use the side button with the volume up button.) Suddenly, the Home button has multiple purposes.
Next up was voice control. Not Siri, mind you: Voice Control is a rudimentary version of Siri, which launched on the iPhone 3GS in 2009. (Fun fact: it still exists on iOS !) As you’d expect, to activate voice control, you hold down the Home button, wait for the voice control UI to appear, and then ask it to perform a task (like “Call Mom” or “Play a song”).
With the release of iOS 4 in 2010, Apple introduced app switching: by double-pressing the Home button, you could open a new menu at the bottom of the screen with all the apps you’d recently used. Tap one and you can switch to it without having to first go to the Home screen to find the app you want.
Of course, the real revolution came in 2011 with the iPhone 4S and Siri. Apple has taken control of voice commands and handed it over to Siri. By long pressing the Home button, you can summon a digital assistant to help you answer questions and complete tasks. (The usefulness of asking Siri to do something has been a matter of debate ever since.) The next milestone in Home button development came with the iPhone 5s. In this model, Apple equipped the button with a fingerprint scanner. This was the era of Touch ID. Gone is the iconic rounded square icon in the center of the Home button, replaced by solid glass. Users could now scan their fingerprints using a button and unlock their iPhones without having to enter a password.
Perhaps the final evolution of the Home button came when it ceased to be a real button at all. With the iPhone 7 series, Apple replaced the physical button with a capacitive one. As with the MacBook, the Taptic Engine underneath the iPhone provides a smart vibration every time you “tap” a button. Essentially, it creates the illusion of a click, even though the “button” doesn’t move at all. (There’s nothing quite like the feeling of the Home button being disabled when your iPhone runs out of battery at the most inopportune moment.)
New player in town
For a number of years, the Home button has been a key component of most Apple products, with the exception of the Mac. Whether you bought an iPhone, an iPad, an iPod touch, or even a specific iPod nano, you’ve used the Home button. But nothing lasts forever.
If you remember, the Home button took up a lot of screen real estate: While other smartphones pushed their displays to the edge of the device, the iPhone still had the same general design for about 10 years. Sure, the overall device looked different and the screens were much larger, but the display was still sandwiched between a large top and bottom bezel, the latter of which housed the Home button.
When Apple wanted to redefine the iPhone design for the iPhone X while pushing the display to its physical limits, there was only one thing left to do: disable the Home button. The iconic button has been ditched in favor of Face ID so Apple can unveil its “10th Anniversary iPhone” with an edge-to-edge display.
Of course, the Home button wasn’t completely eliminated—along with the iPhone X, Apple released the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which included the same capacitive Home button as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. But by the following year, Apple’s entire line of flagship phones—the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR—dropped the Home button.
Since then, only the iPhone SE line has offered a Home button, at least in the iPhone segment. Apple kept the Home button active on the iPad for a while, all the way back to the third-generation iPad Pro (2018), fourth-generation iPad Air (2020), sixth-generation iPad mini (2021), and 10th-generation iPad (2022). And as of the iPhone 16e, the Home button has disappeared from Apple’s lineup.
What the Home Button Did Right
It’s not that the gesture controls aren’t very good – they are! Swiping in iOS feels intuitive and is objectively better than using the Home button in many ways.
But the Home button had some undeniable advantages. For those of us with iPhones with Face ID, it’s hard to remember, but there was a time when it was much easier to unlock your iPhone in the morning without having to resort to using a passcode. You didn’t have to contort your face into the correct position away from the pillow to authenticate yourself: Touch ID works when you’re lying down. (Touch ID also works when your face is puffy from sleep.) That ease extends to unlocking your iPhone: As long as you can physically touch the Home button with the correct fingerprint, you’re in. Just try unlocking your iPhone with Face ID while it’s lying on your desk, without putting your face close to it. And don’t get me started on what it was like to unlock an iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask during a pandemic: before Apple released an update making it easier , it was a nightmare .
Simply put, the Home button was a button , and buttons are great! In general, devices seem to be moving away from buttons in favor of touch or voice control, and while they can certainly be effective, physical buttons are some of the best. There is satisfaction when you click on something and see action as a result. Swiping is fine: I’m used to swiping up to go home, or swiping up and down to access the app switcher. But clicking once to go home or clicking twice to open open apps still works very well, as does clicking a button without a target just because it’s there.
You can also have fun with the Home button, which you can’t do with Face ID. Touch ID settings allow you to store five fingerprint scans on each device, but most of us have ten fingers. So, as you set up each fingerprint, you swapped fingers until the scan was complete, effectively registering two fingers in one scan. Repeat this five times and you can authenticate with any finger. ( This still works on a Mac with Touch ID .)
That the Home button leaves much to be desired
But there’s a problem with buttons: they can break. I’ve never had the home button break, but many others have for one reason or another. And if your home button was broken, it was a real pain in the ass. The Home button can be fixed yourself —iFixit sells a kit for a reasonable price —but if you want Touch ID to continue working, you’ll need to take it to an Apple Store, which will likely charge you hundreds of dollars for the privilege.
While Touch ID is superior to Face ID in some ways, it is inferior in many others. Are your hands wet? Your fingerprint will not be scanned until it is dry. Do you suffer from dry skin in winter? He’s gotten used to using your password for several months. Gloved? Better take them off. Not to mention, Face ID is much more secure than Touch ID, at least according to Apple: the company says the former hasa less than one in a million chance of unlocking when someone else is using your phone, while Touch ID has a one in 50,000 chance of the same failure .
The additional screen provided by removing the bottom panel is also a definite plus. The largest iPhone with a Home button had a 5.5-inch display, and the smallest iPhone with Face ID that Apple currently sells has a 6.1-inch display. It’s hardly a competition. I will say that I don’t see these benefits when watching videos: I don’t like cropping content to fill my iPhone’s display, so on the iPhone Pro Max the overall video size is about the same as on, say, the 8 Plus. What about everything else on iOS? These bezels are hard to miss.
Don’t call the coroner yet
The Home button may have disappeared from Apple’s lineup, but it won’t be forgotten any time soon. It was an iconic feature of the iPhone for the first 10 years of the product’s existence: many phones had a design similar to the iPhone, but only one had a distinctive, rounded Home button.
It’s also not dead . There are still a lot of iPhones with a Home button in use these days. Apple still supports the second- and third-generation iPhone SE, as well as a number of iPads with a Home button, so the company will still have to take Home buttons into account when designing its software for some time.
And while Apple itself won’t sell you a new iPhone with a Home button, you can still easily buy one elsewhere. You can find new and used iPhone SEs at many retailers, and while I wouldn’t recommend it if you care about the longevity of your device, you can even buy a used iPhone 8 or 8 Plus for under $100. The thing is, for a long time, the home button mattered. And until Apple completely abandons support for all devices with a Home button, it will continue to operate.