iOS 14 introduced an incredibly handy accessibility feature dubbed Back Tap, which grants iPhone users the ability to tap twice and/or three times on the back of their handset to invoke an action of their choosing.
Notably, this feature isn’t present on iOS 13, despite the fact that iOS 13-compatible handsets come equipped with the same accelerometer-based hardware that makes this possible.
If this makes you feel short-changed, then we understand. But the good news for jailbreakers is that a new tweak called Backtrix by iOS developer FoxfortMobile back-ports the Back Tap to pwned iOS 13 handsets and makes it infinitely more powerful with the addition of a slew of additional actions beyond mere accessibility features.
Once installed, you can visit the dedicated Backtrix preference pane and get your hands dirty with configuring the tweak to suit your needs:
Here, you can:
- Toggle Backtrix on or off on demand
- Enable or disable Haptic feedback when using Backtrix
- Enable or disable use of the proximity sensor to avoid false positives
- Choose between normal and high sensitivity
- Configure what happens when you double-tap the back of your device
- Configure what happens when you triple-tap on the back of your device
- Blocklist certain applications to prevent the tweak from working when they’re open
- Respring your device to save any changes you make
Notably, the double-tap and triple-tap gestures support the same actions, and can be configured independently from one another to provide up to two different gestures on demand.
Those actions include:
- Do nothing
- App Switcher
- Control Center
- Home Screen
- Lock Screen
- Mute device
- Notification Center
- Reachability
- Spotlight search
- Flashlight
- Low Power Mode
- Do Not Disturb
- Dark Mode
- Night Shift
- Launch an app if your choice
- Trigger an Activator action of your choice
- Play/Pause audio
- Skip to next audio track
- Return to previous audio track
- Volume Up
- Volume Down
- Invoke Assistive Touch
- Invoke Magnifier
- Invoke Smart Invert
- Invoke VoiceOver
- Invoke Zoom
- Invoke Shortcuts that you’ve set up in Apple’s Shortcuts app
As you can tell right off the bat, Backtrix supports substantially more actions than iOS’ native Back Tap feature does. With that in mind, you can do infinitely more with it than you can with the native gesture, and that’s good for end users. What’s more is the tweak can also be installed on jailbroken iOS 14 devices for those who may want to maximize what they can do with these gestures.
We also like the configuration options, allowing for sensitivity adjustments and the inclusion of the proximity sensor to balance pocket-based activations with battery consumption, depending on what the user wants.
Those interested in giving Backtrix a can purchase the tweak for $2.25 from the foxfort repository via their favorite package manager. The tweak supports jailbroken iOS 14 and 14 devices.
If you’re not already using foxfort’s repository, then you can add it to your favorite package manager via the following URL:
https://foxfort.yourepo.com/
Do you have any plans to augment your handset’s functionality with Backtrix? Let us know down in the comments section below.