Everything you can do with the camera control button on iPhone 16

Apple has announced the iPhone 16 line, and it’s an exciting update to one of Apple’s biggest product lines. The iPhone 16 gets the Action button that debuted on the iPhone 15 Pro models last year, and Apple is also adding the new camera control to the entire iPhone 16 line, so it’s not exclusive to the iPhone 16 Pro models — the regular iPhone 16 models have it, too.

Initially rumored to be a “capture” button, Camera Control can do a lot more than just take a photo. Here are all the cool things you can do with Camera Control on the iPhone 16 series.

What is camera control?

Camera Control is a new button located on the bottom right corner of the iPhone 16 bezel. It is placed flush with the bezel so it does not stick out.

Camera Control can be pressed like a normal button, but it also has a built-in touch sensor that lets you swipe it with your finger. Thanks to the haptic engine, Camera Control can even recognize half-presses separately from regular presses. And, as mentioned above, you’ll find it on every iPhone 16 model.

Everything you can do with Camera Control

During Apple’s keynote, the company showed off what the Camera Control button can do. A single press launches the Camera app, and another takes a photo. In the Camera app, if you press and hold the Camera Control button, it starts recording video. When you stop holding the button, it stops recording.

Of course, we mentioned that Camera Control has touch sensors to detect swipe gestures and can also tell the difference between a half press and a full press. This is important because a half press will open up various settings like brightness, exposure, zoom, and more. You can then swipe across Camera Control to fine-tune these individual settings.

Apple also mentioned that Camera Control will be able to lock focus using a two-stage shutter, but that the feature will be rolled out later via a software update.

Apple Visual Intelligence Features

Apple also introduced a new camera control feature we didn’t expect: visual intelligence.

With Visual Intelligence, you can point your iPhone 16 at something and then press the Camera Control button to identify objects in real time. Think of it as Google Lens, except it uses Apple Intelligence.

The presentation used Visual Intelligence to show us a few examples. One use case involved someone pointing a camera at a concert poster. After activating Camera Control, the iPhone added the information from that concert poster to the Calendar app. Another example that was shown involved pointing the camera at a cool bike, and then the iPhone suggested where to find similar bikes to buy.

A big step forward into the future

Camera controls are one of the biggest hardware changes to the iPhone since the action button and USB-C. Since the iPhone has one of the most popular cameras in the world, having camera controls makes it feel even more like a true standalone camera.

Apple also mentioned during the presentation that Camera Control will be usable with third-party apps, with developers assigning their own functions to the button. It will be interesting to see how developers implement Camera Control into their apps, similar to when Dynamic Island first came out.