Have you noticed a little circle pop up on your iPhone? Chances are, it’s the “AssistiveTouch” icon. Do you want to take off the circle? This article will discuss how to disable it or just turn it off, but we’ll also talk about whether you should.
After reading this, we’ll let you make your own mind up about whether or not you want to use assistive touch, or if it just gets in the way.
- Why is there a circle on my iPhone screen?
- How to get rid of the circle on my iPhone
- Do you really need to turn off AssistiveTouch?
Why is there a circle on my iPhone screen?
As we’ve just said in the introduction, that circle on your iPhone is probably assistive touch. But please note that we said “probably”.
If you see a small black circle (it is a square on old iPhone models) with a white circle in the middle, that’s assistive touch.
But, if it looks different, then the circle could be anything. Here are just a few possibilities.
- Your iPhone has frozen on an app that displays a circle.
- It may be from another app, such as Facebook messenger.
- It could be external damage, such as a circular crack or burn mark.
How to get rid of the circle on my iPhone
If it is AssistiveTouch, and you want to get rid of it, you can either do this by disabling it or just turning it off.
If you want to disable it, follow the steps below.
- Open the “Settings” app.
- Select “Accessibility”.
- Under “Physical and Motor”, select “Touch”.
- Press “AssistiveTouch”.
- Ensure the toggle next to “AssistiveTouch” is off- it should be grey, not green.
If you do not want to disable the feature but want to just get rid of the circle, you can turn it off via Accessibility or the control center. Turning off the AssistiveTouch means the circle will be removed from the screen by triple-click the side button or home button. If you need it, you can do the same to recover it quickly. Here is how to turn it off via Accessibility
- Open the “Settings” app.
- Select “Accessibility”.
- Select “Accessibility Shortcut”.
- Select “AssistiveTouch”.
- Triple press the side or home button to remove it from your Home screen.
Here is how to turn AssistiveTouch off via Control Centre.
- Open the “Settings” app.
- Select “Control Centre”.
- Scroll down to “More Controls”.
- Tap the “+” symbol next to “Accessibility Shortcuts” to add it to the control center.
- Now you can swipe down from the top right corner of your iPhone screen to open the control center.
- Press the “Accessibility Shortcuts” logo. It looks like a little man inside a circle.
- If there is a tick next to “Assistive Touch”, tap to remove it.
The above 2 methods are quick ways to get rid of the circle on the iPhone if you don’t need the feature. However, we recommend that you read the next part before you really take off the circle on your iPhone.
Do you really need to turn off AssistiveTouch?
Before you go ahead and turn off or disable the AssistiveTouch, I would recommend pausing for a moment and asking yourself if that’s a wise idea.
Although this feature might seem annoying to you because it keeps appearing on the screen and it even moves all around the screen, once you learn how to use it, it can improve your iPhone experience.
If you tap the circle, you can see several device functions. This will stop you from having to take several steps to change things.
And, if you don’t like what the buttons do, you can change them!
- Go to Settings.
- Tap Accessibility.
- Then choose Touch.
- Open AssistiveTouch.
- If you want to change what items show when you press the white button, select “Customize Top Level Menu”.
Here, you can choose the “menu items” that you like to display on the screen. If you want to add a new option, tap the plus icon and tap the newly made “+” inside the dotted square to choose what to put in there.
Here are just a few of the things you can choose to have.
- Lock Screen
- Rotate Screen
- Mute
- Screenshot
- Speak Screen
- Restart
- …
These features are very helpful if the buttons of your iPhone are broken, and they save you time from using some of the features.
You can also customize what will happen if you double-tap the circle or if you hold it down. You can even create a custom gesture (perhaps three taps followed by a long press). This will
