3D Touch

Get where you’re going with fewer steps using these 3D Touch shortcuts in Apple Maps

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 29, 2019

Getting where you’re going with fewer steps is a lot easier with time-saving 3D Touch shortcuts in Apple Maps. For example, pressing the Maps icon on the Home screen lets you instantly get directions home, send your location to a friend, search what’s nearby or drop a pin on your current location so you can remember where you parked your car.

And within the Maps app, 3D-touching a point of interest lets you preview it quickly, navigate there, call the place and more.

In this tutorial, you're going to learn about all the ways you can take advantage of 3D Touch shortcuts that are currently supported in Apple Maps.

12 great 3D Touch jailbreak tweaks you should try

Anthony Bouchard ∙ February 5, 2016

3D Touch is the flagship new feature of Apple's iPhone 6s handset. It's a part of the display that is capable of capturing forceful touches and performing actions based on how firmly you're pressing, and Apple has done a great job creating a range of features throughout iOS that take advantage of this display technology.

But for those that feel iOS leaves a lot to be desired, the jailbreak community has come up with a variety of new uses for 3D Touch, whether your iPhone supports 3D Touch or not. And in this roundup, we're going to show you a number of tweaks that we think really help compliment the 3D Touch experience on a jailbroken iPhone.

Apple researching pressure-sensing Touch ID with 3D Touch type functionality

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 4, 2016

Apple has filed for a new patent application, which surfaced this morning in the United States Patent & Trademark Office's (USPTO) database.

It reveals that the Cupertino firm is seeking to add pressure sensing capability to the iPhone's Touch ID button while hinting at the possibility of enabling 3D Touch-like functionality by way of applying various degrees of pressure to the Home button.

Titled “Force-sensitive fingerprint sensing input,” the invention describes adding a resistive element having a mechanically resistive force to the Touch ID button—such as an elastomeric material, spring or similar component—which would then be able to measure the depression.

How to choose which contacts appear in the Phone app 3D Touch shortcut menu

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

Are the contacts in the 3D Touch shortcut menu of the Phone app confusing you? Upon pressing Phone's icon lightly, a menu pops up with four seemingly random contacts, making it easy to call them quickly from the Home screen. Believe it or not, there's actually some logic behind listing these quick contacts. Even better, you can change their order as well as set other people to be listed in Phone's shortcut menu.

New in Google app: 3D Touch for ‘I’m Feeling Curious’

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 1, 2016

Google today issued a nice little update to its mobile search application for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. In addition to the usual assortment of bug fixes and stability improvements, version 12.0 delivers a novel use case for the 3D Touch feature on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus: if you press the Google app icon on your Home screen, you'll get a shortcuts menu with a new “I’m Feeling Lucky” option.

It's the mobile equivalent of Google's legendary “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature on the web which delivers a fun, interesting fact. But the new app has another surprise up its sleeve, provided your device is running iOS 9.

Be more productive in Mail with these 3D Touch shortcuts

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 29, 2019

Apple's Mail is a great place to start trying out iOS's time-saving 3D Touch interactions on your iPhone. With 3D Touch, not only can you create a new email and jump to your inboxes right from the Home screen but manage your emails more efficiently with in-app Peek and Pop gestures.

In this tutorial, you will learn about all the ways Mail takes advantage of 3D Touch to make you more productive by letting you preview emails, contacts, web links, as well as embedded dates and times, airline codes, package tracking numbers and more.

‘3D Touch Notifications’ lets you peek and pop your notifications with 3D Touch

Anthony Bouchard ∙ January 30, 2016

3D Touch is one of the flagship features of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, allowing users to press firmly on various interfaces throughout iOS to reveal hidden menus with shortcuts to commonly-performed actions.

Despite iOS already having a variety of 3D Touch peek and pop menus, the jailbreak community is continuing to engineer interesting new uses for 3D Touch, such as this recent scale concept tweak, and it doesn't stop there. A new jailbreak tweak called 3D Touch Notifications from Cydia's BigBoss repository is about to change the way you interact with notifications on the Lock screen and in Notification Center using 3D Touch.

This tweak lets you use 3D Touch to measure an object’s weight

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated February 2, 2016

3D Touch gives iPhone 6s users tons of new features throughout the iOS operating system out of the box, but that's not keeping the jailbreak community from coming up with incredible new uses for it.

Grams is an incredible new jailbreak tweak being made available in Cydia's BigBoss repository for $0.99 that allows those with an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus to measure the weight of light objects by using the 3D Touch display right from Control Center, and in this piece, we'll take you through a few of the details of how it's able to accomplish this.

Facebook rolling out new 3D Touch features in its mobile app

Cody Lee ∙ January 21, 2016

Facebook on Thursday began rolling out new 3D Touch features to iPhone 6s users via its mobile app. The Verge reports that the additions include the ability to peek and pop things like web links, profiles, pages, groups, events and photos.

The Facebook app has supported 3D Touch since October, but until now it has mostly been about the Quick Actions—the shortcut menu for Home screen icons. Facebook has added a new one of these as well, which takes you to your Timeline.

Microsoft updates Office for iOS with 3D Touch features, Apple Pencil support and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 21, 2016

Microsoft today rolled out updates to its mobile Office suite in the App Store: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Across the board these apps have gained support for 3D Touch shortcuts on the iPhone 6s/Plus.

In addition, the new 'Annotate with Ink' feature puts a set of cool tools on the new Draw tab for drawing, writing and highlighting things using touch, pen or Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro.

Mimic iOS 9.3’s new Calculator app Quick Action with this tweak

Anthony Bouchard ∙ January 18, 2016

iOS 9.3 beta includes a new Quick Action feature for the Calculator app, allowing those with a 3D Touch display to press firmly on the Calculator app icon to reveal a new option: Copy Last Result.

Fortunately, those with a jailbroken device on iOS 9.0-9.0.2 don't have to upgrade to iOS 9.3 beta to get this feature. A new free jailbreak tweak called CalculatorCopy is now available in Cydia's BigBoss repository that will bring this feature to older iOS 9 installations.

New 3D Touch shortcuts for stock apps in iOS 9.3

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 10, 2023

In addition to a few headlining features revealed in the first beta of iOS 9.3—such as Night Shift mode, Notes protection with Touch ID, improvements for the Health app and other goodies—proud iPhone 6s owners will be happy to learn about a bunch of new 3D Touch-enabled shortcuts for Apple's stock apps.

Ranging from Settings to App Store to Health and more, half a dozen apps have either gained 3D Touch shortcuts for the first time or introduced new ones in the menu that appear after pressing an icon on the Home screen.