Two Uses of the iPhone's "Home" Button That Don't Take You "Home"

The avid iPhone user will recognize it right away – the home button sits in the bottom center of the iPhone, helping you come back to reality after defeating alien invaders in one of your favorite iPhone apps.  When your iPhone is part of your daily habits, it can be easy to gloss over this oft-used button, and even ignore the different uses you can get out of it.

Believe it or not, with a little customization and a couple of tips, you can make your home button do more than simply return you to the default screen.  Let's learn how.

Finding Your Favorites with the Home Button

Unless you're new to the world of iPhones, you probably already know about your favorites, the list of people you frequently call.  Setting up a favorites list can give you a shortcut when you want to make a few calls to close friends, rather than sorting through an extensive contacts list.

Digging up your favorites list can be tapping the Phone icon, followed by the Favorites icon.  But why not access this list directly from your home button?

To do this, enter "Settings" from your home screen.  Choose "General," followed by "Home."  Tap "Phone favorites" so that there's a checkmark next to it – voila!  When you double-tap your home button, you'll be able to access your favorites in a hurry.

Activating Your Voice Control

Now that you've got something going on for tapping and double-tapping your home button, what about holding it in?  It's quite simple:  hold in your home button for a few seconds to activate the voice control option.  This will allow you to speak the names of people you want to call or songs you want to play.

Using voice control, you can even ask the iPhone what song it's playing – you'll hear an answer.  You can even tell it to play an album you have stored on it, or have it play similar songs.  If it sounds like "Star Trek"-age technology, it basically is.

Voice control works great for when you're riding in the car and don't have so much as a free finger to click "call."  Simply hold in the home button before you start driving and you can listen to music or make calls without needing even one hand.  It's also great for impressing friends.