Okay, there’s a lot I really like about the new iPhone 7 and iOS 10, but I can’t quite get my muscle memory updated with the new push-to-unlock sequence. Can I change it so that just touching the home button unlocks the new iPhone?
You’re clearly not the first person to have a bit of an issue with the new unlock sequence on the Apple iPhone line (well, the 6, 6s and 7, since the change only affects TouchID home buttons) because there is indeed a setting that you can tweak to bring back the old behavior. However, before you do, I encourage you to spend a bit more time with the default iOS 10 settings to see if you can get used to it because I actually prefer it, having had iPhones since the very first one came out almost a decade ago.
The problem with the touch-to-unlock is that I was constantly missing the notifications on the lock screen. I’d see it flash a message, touch the home button to turn the screen back on, and boom! I’d be looking at my home screen, notifications having completely vanished. Yes, I could swipe down (and tap “Notifications” in iOS 9) to get to them, but that rather defeats the purpose of the notifications in the first place.
You can also use what I did with the old system: use a different finger to “bring up the notifications”, but that’s kinda lame too. The phone should work around how I want to use it, not vice versa!
Anyway, if you do want to change the behavior of your home button in iOS 10 on the TouchID enabled iPhones, start by tapping on “Settings“…
You want “General“, so tap on that, as shown.
Here’s what you’ll see:
Swipe down until you find “Accessibility“. Surprisingly, it’s not “Home Button” you want here!
Tap on “Accessibility” then swipe down until you see “Home Button“:
Tap on “Home Button“, you’re almost there!
There’s what you want: “Rest Finger to Open“. Enable that and you’re good to go with that classic iOS 9 behavior for unlocking your new iPhone 7. But still… you could give the new design a bit of a whirl for another week or two and see if you grow to like it. Juuust saying. 🙂