If you have the new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus–or are thinking of getting one–you may have heard about Apple’s new 3D Touch feature that’s exclusive to those models. An enhancement of the Apple Watch Force Touch feature, 3D Touch uses pressure sensitive touch technology that responds to how hard or softly you press your screen.
While that might not sound too exciting, 3D Touch is a potential game-changer in how you can interact with your apps.
How 3D Touch interacts with apps
Peek and Pop
Via 3D touch, Apple lets you ‘Peek’ or ‘Pop’ into an app that’s been upgraded to take advantage of the new feature.
If you press a screen element slightly but consistently, it’ll let you peek at (preview) what’s inside. Press a little more firmly from there, and you can pop into (access) the main app. Think of Peep as like previewing your MacBook files while your cursor hovers over the icon, and pop is the click that opens it for you.
In this sense, the iPhone’s stock apps like Mail, FaceTime, Messaging, Call and Contacts are already primed to get the most out of 3D Touch. However, it’ll take 3rd party apps some time to integrate more ingenious uses into the apps experience. For now, users will have to be content with Quick Actions.
Quick Actions
Quick Actions are enabled when 3D Touch is used with app icons for apps that support the feature. Long pressing the apps icon will open a menu with certain shortcuts.
For example, when 3D Touch is used with the camera icon, it gives you the contextual menu with shortcuts to taking a photo, recording a video, launching FaceTime camera. Think of Quick Actions as right clicking on a desktop icon to access the contextual menu.
TrackPad
Another neat function of 3D Touch is that it lets you convert your keyboard into a trackpad. Whenever you need to type, you’ll have the option of activating the trackpad by simply long pressing anywhere over it. Then you’ll have a cursor to select, highlight or place within the text with incredible precision. Gone are the days of the inaccurate and sometimes extremely frustrating method of highlighting words via long touch.
Multi-Tasking
Older iPhones require double clicking the home button to bring up multitasking, but in the newest iPhones this feature is called the ‘app switcher’ and uses 3D Touch. You can activate the app switcher by pressing firmly on the left side of the screen and then sliding slightly to the right, without lifting your finger.
With this feature you can quickly switch between apps or close the apps you won’t be using anymore.
Third party apps that support 3D Touch
Let’s be fair here–3D Touch is so new that you can’t expect every app to already support it. Add to this fact that not everyone has the latest iPhones, so many developers may not add 3D Touch support until the feature has become more prevalent. That being said, many of the most popular apps have been optimized for 3D Touch, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Dropbox, Skype, and Instapaper.
Roli’s Noise 5D is perhaps one of the few apps out there that have succeeded in leveraging 3D Touch better than any other developer. If you are a musician or just have a musical ear, Noise 5D lets you create your own music for free instead of spending thousands of dollars on musical instruments. When using 3D Touch, you can create a wide variety of sounds and effects simply by altering the amount of pressure applied on the keys. Check out Roli’s cool demo video to get a quick taste of what you can do.
We’re just getting started
Although 3D Touch is a revolutionary concept, it’s still very early for the developers to experiment with it and release novel uses for it. So for now, we’ll get to use it for only limited scenarios.
And because it’s still early, not everyone likes 3D Touch. Some folks complain that it only works for them intermittently, and others are calling it more of a chore than a convenience.
We’ll just have to wait and see if 3D Touch will catch on, or crash and burn. (Remember Samsung’s forgettable curved screen?) But we’re hoping it succeeds, so developers–have fun and good luck.
About the Author: Shahid Abbasi is a marketing consultant with Peerbits, a one-stop iPhone app development company and the home of app enthusiasts. Shahid likes to be busy with his team, to provide top-notch mobility solutions for enterprises and startups. Follow Peerbits on Facebook.
