iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Home Button

Here it is: the one and only real button on the front of this phone. (It's identified on the facing page.) Push it to summon the Home screen, which is your gateway to everything the iPhone can do.

Having a Home button is a wonderful thing. It means you can never get lost. No matter how deeply you burrow into the iPhone software, no matter how far off track you find yourself, one push of the Home button takes you all the way back to the beginning.

Sounds simple, but remember that the iPhone doesn't have an actual Back button or End button. The Home button is the only way out of some screens.

The Home button has four other functions, depending on how and when you push it. Here we go:

• Wakes the phone. One push wakes up the iPhone if it's in Standby mode. That's sometimes easier than finding the Sleep/Wake switch on the top edge.

• Opens your speed-dial list. Two quick pushes on the Home button take you directly to your Favorites list (Deleting Someone). That's a great shortcut, because it lets you jump from any software program on the iPhone to the phone-calling list without having to go Home first. (This works only if the iPhone is already on, and only if you haven't changed the factory settings shown on General.)

• Opens your iPod. Two quick pushes on the Home button can, instead, take you directly to your iPod screen (Chapter 4). Once again, Apple is assuming that you might want a shortcut to such a frequently used part of the iPhone.

  To set this up, you must first visit Settings; see General.

• Force quits a stuck program. The Home button is also a "force quit" button. If you press it for six seconds straight, whatever program you're running completely shuts down. That's a good troubleshooting technique when a particular program seems to be acting up.

Some beginners forget that the Home button is a physical push-button—it's not touch-sensitive like the screen—and get frustrated when it doesn't respond. Give it a real manly push.