Note that this feature is available on both Android and iPhone although it is named differently on both devices i.e., assistive touch on iPhone and assistant menu on android, it performs similar functions.
If you’re reading this post right now you might probably be asking yourself these questions
- What is assistive touch?
- Why would I or do I need to activate assistive touch on my smart phone?
- What is/are the uses of assistive touch/assistant menu?
- How do I enable assistive touch on my phone?
If these are some of the questions running through your mind then stick throughout this post as we discuss the what, the why and the how.
What is assistive touch?
Assistive touch is a convenient feature/tool that allows users to perform certain functionalities on the smart phone without the use of certain keys or key combinations or manually going to search for it.
Why you have to enable assistive touch.
You may want to navigate your way to turn ON this feature if;
- You have difficulty touching the screen or you require an adaptive accessory.
- Your power button or home button(especially iPhone users) and volume up/down buttons are malfunctioning.
- You are having issues with taking screenshots, increasing/
decreasing volume, viewing recent apps, turning on/off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and so on.
What is/are the uses of assistive touch.
The cool thing about assistive touch is that, users can customize the button press effects/actions. This means that you can set the actions/functions based on your preferences when the assistive touch button is pressed. You can set the option(functionalities) that pop up when you tap on the assistive touch, you can also customize the effects of double tapping, single tapping and long pressing the assistive touch button and many more. Also, the assistive touch has got functionalities such as volume up/down, switch between apps, take screenshots, view notification, mute device, lock screen, rotate screen and also do a device restart. All these among others are some of the cools stuffs assistive touch/ assistant menu helps you do on your smart phone.
How to enable assistive touch.
On iPhone
- Navigate to the “settings” menu on your phone
- Tap on “General” to get a list of general options
- Tap on “Accessibility”
- In the next interface/screen which displays a list of Accessibility options , tap on “AssistiveTouch”.
- Tap on the button to toggle it ON. Now you’ve enabled AssistiveTouch.
6. You can choose to customize the appearance of the menu that appears when you click on the assistive touch and set up custom actions with respect to long press, double tap and single tap. Once the assistive touch feature is enabled you can play around with it to get it to work as you wish.
On Android
- Go to settings
- In the settings menu, tap on Accessibility
- Next, tap on Interaction and dexterity
- In the interaction and dexterity menu that opens, toggle to the right to turn it ON.
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