Respectfully, your iPhone’s Action Button is trash. At least compared to mine… but it doesn’t have to be.
When Apple added the Action Button to the iPhone 15 Pro, most people set it to do something simple. Open the camera, toggle the flashlight, or maybe just kept it as a mute switch. Functional, sure, but kind of boring for the only customizable hardware button on the phone. I wanted more… and I wasn’t alone.
A few years back, I watched a Brandon Butch video where he showed how your phone could check its orientation before running an action on the action button. That tip alone was clever, but I knew I could take it a step further. So I built what I call the Super Action Button — a Shortcut that changes what it does based on how I’m holding my phone and which Focus Mode is active at that time.
As I look forward to the upcoming release of the iPhone Fold (or Ultra, whatever they end up calling it), I already know I’m gonna be missing out if they end up removing the Action Button. It’s got a lot it can do when utilized fully. My Super Action Button is fast, intuitive, and surprisingly personal once you get it dialed in just for you.
Now, I know I’m not the only one who has their action button setup this way, but whenever I look for action button tips, I never find anything close to how I have mine setup, so thought I would share for anyone interested.
The Super Action Button
One button. Potentially dozens of uses.
What It Does (and Why It’s Better)
The Super Action Button isn’t just one static shortcut. It adapts in real time to two things:
- The phone’s orientation: portrait, landscape left, landscape right, or upside down
- Your current Focus Mode: Driving, Work, Media, and so on. This is entirely dependent on how you use your phone.
That means the same button can behave completely differently depending on context. It feels like your phone actually understands what you’re trying to do.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. Note, this is just my personal setup but everything can be built how you like it.
When the phone’s upright (Portrait)
- Media Focus → Apple TV Remote
- Personal Focus → My “Home Menu” Shortcut
- Work Focus → Opens my email client
- Driving+ Focus → A quick-pick menu of Maps, YouTube, Music, or Messages
- Finance Focus → Rocket Money
- Travel Focus → Translate
- Sleep Focus → Clock
Think of these as the sort of typical actions I would expect to experience if I’m just looking at my phone in a normal angle, in specific focus modes.
When the phone’s sideways (Landscape Right)
- Driving+ Focus → Automatically starts playing my 2025 playlist
- Media Focus → Opens YouTube on Apple TV
- Otherwise → Open Camera in Video mode
Now with just a twist of my wrist, I’ve unlocked more actions on the same action button in the same focus mode.
When the phone’s sideways (Landscape Left)
- Work Focus → Notes
- Otherwise → Open Camera in Photo mode
Rinse and repeat with as many different combinations of orientation and focus modes as your heart desires.
When the phone’s inverted (Portrait Upside Down)
- Open Camera in Slo-Mo
And so on and so forth. That could easily be a dozen different actions, all from one button press. Again, these are just examples — you can set it to do what you want.
What You’ll Need
- An iPhone 15 Pro or later (for the Action Button)
- iOS 17 or newer
- The Shortcuts app
- A few Focus Modes set up
How It Works (Example Screenshots)
Here’s what that looks like inside the Shortcuts app:
Try It Yourself
This is the version I use every day. It includes:
- Focus Mode checks
- Orientation-based camera behavior
- Smart app launching
- A quick-pick driving menu
- A fallback path to make sure something always happens
Download the Super Action Button Shortcut
It’s free, editable, and meant to be customized. Clone it and make it yours.
Notes/Disclaimers:
- This will take some customization to work properly for you and be useful for your day to day. What works for me may not work for you. Certain options will not transfer over to the shared link and will need to be populated specifically on your device.
- You will need to replace my Home Menu with a different shortcut or change that function as that is a separate shortcut that is personalized to my daily use.
- This link will have the name of my Focus modes shared – you will need to swap those out for your own focus modes.
- My Driving+ Focus Mode is not the default Driving focus mode. You need to create a custom Driving Focus Mode because the Default Driving focus mode does not allow customizations due to driver safety reasons. Drive responsibly.
- This shortcut and the links provided here work as of the time of this blog post. I can’t say that this shortcut will work forever, but it works now with the current logic of the Shortcuts app and iOS.
Just Want a Smarter Camera?
If you’d rather keep things simple, you can build a camera-only version that reacts to orientation:
- Portrait: Photo
- Upside down: Slo-Mo
- Landscape right: Video
- Landscape left: Photo (or you could adjust this to Portrait mode)
Download the Orientation Based Camera Shortcut
Setting It Up on your Action Button
- Go to Settings → Action Button
- Swipe until you see Shortcut
- Select the Super Action Button shortcut
That’s it. One button for as many functions as you can dream up.
I know things like this can sometimes be complex to setup when you’re first getting started with shortcuts. So if you have any questions about how to set this up just drop me an email to Admin@SFwordsmith.com, or connect with me on socials and I will try my best to answer any questions you may have.
Until next time!
-Spencer
Photo cred: Featured iPhone Photo by Samuel Angor on Unsplash
