Is Apple Planning to Nix the Action Button?
Greg Joswiak introducing the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro [Apple]
Toggle Dark Mode
Next to the absence of Face ID, one of the most conspicuous omissions on this year’s iPhone Duo is the Action button. However, if a new rumor is true, that might not simply be an engineering problem but rather a sign of things to come.
In a new post on Weibo, leaker “Instant Digital” is suggesting that Apple plans to get rid of the Action button entirely on all future iPhone models, starting next fall.
This won’t include the iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e, which are expected to debut in the first half of 2027 — a reasonable exemption since those are still part of the iPhone 18 family — though it’s anybody’s guess whether the “iPhone Air 2” might be the first on the Action button chopping block.
According to Instant Digital, Apple plans to move the capabilities of the Action button into the Camera Control, where a single tap will continue to open the Camera app, but a long press will perform the functions that can currently be assigned to the Action button.
As things stand right now, a long press of the Camera Control activates Visual Intelligence. However, that’s arguably a holdover from when it first launched on the iPhone 16, when that was the only way to bring up Visual Intelligence.
While Apple never explicitly took that functionality away, it opened up more ways to access Visual Intelligence by adding it to the Action button with the iPhone 16e — since that didn’t have a Camera Control — and later effectively backported it to the iPhone 15 Pro models with iOS 18.4.
At the same time, Apple also added a Visual Intelligence button to Control Center, which could also be added to the iPhone Lock Screen. Nevertheless, a long press on the Camera Control continued to be the “default” way to access the feature on iPhones that were equipped with that extra button. This could be turned off if you didn’t want to use it for that, but it couldn’t be reassigned.
However, if Instant Digital’s information is accurate, it appears that Apple will effectively just move the assignability of the Action button to the Camera Control. The Action button already requires a long press to activate, so the functionality wouldn’t change that much — only the location of the button itself.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Visual Intelligence is no longer a hidden app that requires a special control to access. Apple moved it straight into the Camera app in iOS 27 under a new “Siri” tab. That makes a dedicated control even less necessary, although users can still assign Visual Intelligence to the Action button, and would presumably be able to do so under this new arrangement.
With a single prediction from only one leaker with a mixed track record, we’d hardly take this one to the bank right now, but it certainly seems plausible. Apple explicitly chose to add the Camera Control to the iPhone Duo and not the Action button, which already shows us where its priorities are, and removing the additional button could simplify the design and reduce manufacturing costs.
If the Action button does go away, it would be the first time since the Home button that Apple has removed a dedicated physical button rather than replacing it. The Action button replaced the mute switch, and mostly duplicated the same functionality, but that was also a year before the Camera Control came along as a fifth hardware button, so it’s not hard to see why Apple might feel it’s time to pull the number back down to four.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
