In this roundup, we cover everything you can do with the new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 series, including adjusting settings to customize it to your needs.
What’s the Camera Control button?
Camera Control is a new touch and pressure-sensitive button on the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max models. This button sits on the lower right edge of the device, and its primary function is to launch the iPhone camera quickly so you never miss a shot.
But it can do so much more, as you’ll see in this tutorial.
Ways to interact with the Camera Control button
Power, volume, and even the relatively new Action button support just a normal press, but the Camera Control has multiple tricks up its sleeves. You can click it, lightly press it once or twice, and even swipe on its touch surface to do different things.
Open the camera
As evident from the name, the main function of Camera Control is to let you open the camera quickly. So, when you want to take a picture, just click the button once to launch the iOS Camera app.
Take a picture or start recording
Clicking the Camera Control takes a picture when you’re in photo camera mode. If you’re in video camera mode, it starts recording, and clicking it again stops the recording.
Lock focus and exposure
When you’re in the iPhone Camera, lightly press and hold the Camera Control to lock the exposure and focus on a subject (AE/AF LOCK); continue touching the Camera Control button to maintain focus and exposure lock.
If you don’t want to lock focus and exposure using Camera Control, go to iPhone Settings > Camera > Camera Control and turn it off.
Tweak camera settings before taking a picture
You can use the Camera Control button to select and adjust some camera settings so your final picture is just the way you want it to be.
- Start by opening the camera on your iPhone 16.
- Lightly press the Camera Control, and you’ll see a tiny pane pop out on the screen. It will show a particular camera setting like EV (Exposure Value).
- Swipe up or down with one finger on the touch-sensitive Camera Control slider to adjust the EV (or whatever setting is on the screen).
- You can also lightly double-press the Camera Control switch, then scroll through the camera settings, namely Exposure, Depth, Zoom, Cameras, Style, and Tone. If you decide to use one of these, lightly press the Camera Control switch to select it. With the desired setting selected, slide your finger on the Camera Control to change its value.
You can adjust these camera features using the new Camera Control button:
- Change exposure: Use it to brighten or darken the scene.
- Adjust depth-of-field effect: Switches to portrait mode and lets you increase or decrease the background blur of the picture.
- Zoom: Use it to zoom optically or digitally between 0.5x to 25x.
- Switch cameras: This lets you toggle the front-facing camera or use quick zoom levels (i.e., 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x).
- Select Photographic Style: Pick from one of the latest generation Photographic Styles. To adjust the values of the chosen style, tap the icon in the top right of the screen and then drag on the bigger panel to change the tone, color, and intensity.
- Adjust the tone: Change its value to lighten or deepen the mood.
Open third-party camera apps
You can go to iPhone Settings > Camera > Camera Control and reconfigure this switch to open the camera system of some other installed third-party app like Halide, Blackmagic Cam, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
Open the Magnifier to read small text
All iPhones have a built-in Magnifier app that has quite a few handy features but is mainly used to read tiny labels on medicine boxes and such. You can go to Camera Control settings and have it open the Magnifier directly. Once inside the Magnifier, lightly double-press the Camera Control to select Zoom, Contrast, Brightness, or Filters. Then, swipe with your thumb or one finger to adjust the value.
Open the QR code scanner
If you scan a lot of QR codes, set the Camera Control to do just that. When you’re in the code scanner, lightly press the Camera Control and then swipe to zoom in if needed.
Use Visual Intelligence
Visual Intelligence lets you point your iPhone camera at an object in your physical space and get help using ChatGPT or Google Lens. It can also do other neat things like translate text on a sign or menu, tell you about the store hours, add a calendar event if you point it to a flyer, and more.
Customize Camera Control settings
You have a few options to tweak the Camera Control functionality and make it work the way you like.
Open the camera with a double click instead of a single click
Go to iPhone 16 Settings > Camera > Camera Control and select Double Click under the Launch Camera section.
Use Camera Control even when the screen is off
Out of the box, pressing the Camera Control doesn’t launch the camera (or the set app) if the iPhone is locked. This is in place to prevent triggering the camera accidentally. However, if you like, you can go to iPhone 16 Settings > Display & Brightness and turn off Require Screen On to quickly activate the camera even when the iPhone screen is off.
Turn off Clean Preview
When you open the camera and lightly press the Camera Control, all on-screen buttons, except for the shutter button, disappear from the view. If you want to keep them on the screen, go to Settings > Camera > Camera Control and turn off Clean Preview.
Adjust the press and click settings for Camera Control
Head to Settings > Camera > Camera Control > Accessibility. From here, you can adjust:
- The force required to lightly press the Camera Control switch
- The speed of double light-press
- Double click speed
Use Camera Control only as a shutter button
If you find it confusing or unintuitive to use the Camera Control, you can change a few settings and have it act only as a shutter button to capture the shot and nothing more.
Disable the Camera Control switch
If you don’t want to open an app with this new switch, go to Settings > Camera > Camera Control and select None.
You can also return to Camera Control accessibility settings and turn off Light-Press or Swipe gestures. If you don’t want to use this button at all, turn off the Camera Control switch at the top of the accessibility settings.