iPhone/iPad VoiceOver: App Switcher and Actions

Douglas: Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we'll be exploring what Apple calls our App Switcher. Now our App Switcher gives us a quick way to switch between all of our recently opened apps, which can be super handy. We'll also check out how to use our actions. Yeah, our actions are kind of like a hidden shortcut to some of our most frequently used menu items. So let's jump right in and check out our App Switcher and actions.

Now, if we're using an iPhone without a home button, we'll need to use our single-finger, drag-up gesture. And once we feel our second vibration and hear our little audio cue, voiceover will announce lift for App Switcher and we just lift for the App Switcher. Otherwise, if we have a home button, we'll just double-tap our home button instead. So let's go ahead and do it. We'll go ahead and open our App Switcher

Voiceover: Lift for App Switcher. App Switcher, Music active. Swipe up with three fingers to close the app. Swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double-tap to activate.

Douglas: Great, our App Switcher is open and we have been given a list of all of our recently opened apps. And we could just begin left and right-swiping to move between our apps here. You know, we heard voiceover announce Music, which just so happens to be the last app that we had open and that also means that it's the last app in our list here. Now we could just one-finger double-tap and our Music app would open right up, which is the beauty of our App Switcher, right? We can quickly get back to any of our recently opened apps. So let's go ahead and we left-swipe a couple of times through this and we'll check out how to move through our App Switcher. So we'll just left-swipe.

Voiceover: Weather active. Swipe up with three fingers to close the app, swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double-tap to activate.

Douglas: Yeah, there's our Weather app. So let's left-swipe one more time here.

Voiceover: Sports Alerts active. Swipe up with three fingers who close the app. Swipe up or down to select a custom action. then double-tap to activate.

Douglas: Yeah, and here we are on our Sports Alerts app. You know, we keep hearing voiceover repeat a lot of really great hints. We were told that we could swipe up our screen with three fingers to close each of these apps here, which is a great thing to do if we have found that one of our apps seems to be acting kind of buggy or glitchy for us. And voiceover also told us that we have some custom actions available and all we need to do to move through our actions is just swipe up or down our screen with one finger. So how about we do just that? We'll swipe down our screen with one finger here and we'll check out all of our actions. So we'll swipe down.

Voiceover: Close Sports Alerts.

- Yeah, voiceover announced, "Close Sports Alerts" and you've probably already guessed that all we have to do is just one finger double-tap and our Sports Alerts app here will close, which is handy. Okay, I believe that we only have one more action here, so we'll just swipe down to check it out.

Voiceover: Activate default.

- Great. Voiceover said, "Activate." And we were told that this is the default action. So if we were to one-finger double-tap now, our Sports Alerts app would open right up. I tell you, actions really are super fantastic and we'll find some really useful action throughout our entire device. You know, one of my favorite places to use actions is in our list of email messages. Okay, so since we're on our Activate action, how about we just one-finger double-tap and we'll open up our Sports Alerts app here. So let's do it. We'll just double-tap.

Voiceover: Selected Sports Alerts, Favorite Teams button.

Douglas: And hey, there you go. Our Sports Alerts app is open and we can jump right into using it. Okay, that pretty much covers how to move through our App Switcher and also what to do when we hear that we have custom actions available. I tell you, our App Switcher can be so useful for quickly getting to our most recently used open apps. And our actions can really be useful as well. Not only our App Switcher, but throughout our entire device. Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care, and I'll see you next time.