Use Your iPhone 6 With One Hand Using Reachability

Do you own an iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus or a 6S Plus? If so, use Reachability to make it easier to use the phone with only one hand. The iPhone 6 (or 6S) and iPhone 6 Plus (or 6S Plus) come with 4.7″ and 5.5″ screens, respectively. Apple added a feature named Reachability to make it easier to use these larger phones with only one hand. This feature is enabled by default, but it can be disabled. To invoke this feature double tap the Home button. Make sure you only use a gentle tap, don’t actually depress the Home button. When you invoke Reachability the entire screen shifts downward. The lower half disappears off-screen and the upper half is now within reach.  How handy!

To exit Reachability mode do any of the following:

  • Double tap the Home button again to turn it off
  • Depress the Home button once
  • Touch the blank space at the top of the screen
  • Simply wait. After a few seconds Reachability turns itself off.

[Update Feb 2019: Reachability continues to be a feature of iOS even though Apple has introduced the iPhone X and other phones without a Home button. On these newer phones one needs to enable Reachability since it it off by default. To enable it, do this:

  • Tap on Settings
  • Tap on General
  • Tap on Accessibility
  • Scroll to the Interaction section, locate Reachability and slide its on/off button to the on position.

Now, to invoke Reachability, open any app on your iPhone, then place your finger about 1/4″ from the bottom of the screen and swipe it to the edge of your phone. You should immediately see the upper half of the screen slide to the lower half of the screen. To exit this mode tap the faint, light grey up arrow that now appears in the middle of your screen.]

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