I’m a lifelong Apple loyalist, but one feature on my iPhone 16 was so annoying that it threatened to derail my entire experience with the smartphone. It wasn’t until I went digging in my settings that I found I could disable this button, and it was so effective I haven’t looked back since. This is my best iPhone hack.
When I initially upgraded from an older iPhone, I was surprised to see two new buttons on my then-new iPhone 16: the action and camera control buttons. The action button is a small button above the volume adjusters. It was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro models and is a customizable button that can do anything from turning your ringer on to ordering coffee from Dunkin’ to go. It’s small, demure and minds its own business. It’s the camera control button that caused all the chaos.
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Camera control is a new button on the iPhone 16 lineup that does exactly what the name suggests: It controls your camera. It’s meant to help you quickly snap photos and serves as a shortcut to launching your camera app. You can slide your finger on a mini settings menu to adjust camera zoom, among other settings. But there’s one true reason for its existence: AI. All of the iPhone 17 models have this button as well.
Like every other tech company, Apple is heavily investing in artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence has been the driving force behind much of the company’s innovation, with lots of AI updates in the new iOS 26. But there’s no bigger sign of Apple’s deep dive into AI than the camera control button. It’s the physical pathway to Visual Intelligence, a new AI-powered feature that allows you to use your camera to scan objects in the real world to get more information on them. It sounds snazzy, but this is completely pointless to me, and it’s a feature I have never been enticed to use.
There are other use cases for the camera control button, including ways to customize button settings, as my colleagues have found through their testing. But that doesn’t change the fact that my camera control button is so completely annoying.
It’s a long button, about the size of the power button, located on the lower right side of the device. And it’s very, very easy to tap by accident. I’ve opened my camera while putting my phone in my pocket, while I’m driving and using navigation apps and, once, as I was turning off my phone for the night, which left the camera app open the whole night and drained my phone’s battery.
And if that wasn’t annoying enough, every time I actually intended to open my camera via camera control, it took several taps to do so. Go figure. While I had camera control enabled, my camera roll included stunning shots like these:
I couldn’t tell you when or where these photos got accidentally taken.
My question: What is the point of a button that works when you don’t need it and doesn’t work when you do? There are already three different ways to access your iPhone camera from the lock screen that take just seconds to use. Camera control is a very expensive and very unreliable addition to the newer iPhones, all for the sake of AI features that many people don’t need or use. And there hasn’t been one moment since I turned camera control off that I’ve missed it.
I realize that my gripes with camera control are minor complaints among what has been an overall positive experience with a new phone. But as an AI reporter, I can’t help but see this as a troubling sign. So many tech companies have overhauled their software and devices to be AI-friendly, whether it’s Google spamming us with Gemini pop-ups in every single Google app, the new Copilot button on Microsoft Windows laptops or Apple’s camera control button.
Tech companies are too eager to get on the AI train and haven’t given enough thought to whether those features enhance or just derail our experience using their products. And not enough offer opt-out options. Thankfully for me and my camera roll, Apple does. But I hope in the future, such drastic measures won’t be necessary as companies become more intentional with their AI-enabling features.
If you want to join me in making your camera control button obsolete, navigate to your iPhone settings and select camera. Then, tap camera control. Within camera control, select accessibility, then toggle off camera control. If you’re also experiencing the hyper-sensitivity, you can adjust how many taps (and the pressure needed) to trigger the button in that same accessibility page under light-press force.
For more, check out our hands-on experience with the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.
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Frequently Asked Questions
A long button on the lower right side of the iPhone 16 (and all iPhone 17 models) that launches the camera and adjusts settings like zoom with a finger slide. Its real purpose is as a physical pathway to Visual Intelligence, Apple's AI feature for scanning real-world objects.
Yes. The author dug through settings, disabled it, and has not looked back since. Colleagues have also found ways to customize the button settings through testing.
It is very easy to tap by accident, opening the camera in a pocket, while driving with navigation, or overnight and draining the battery, yet it takes several taps when you actually intend to use it.
Yes. There are already three different ways to access the iPhone camera from the lock screen that take just seconds, which makes the button feel like an expensive and unreliable addition for AI features many people do not use.
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