What to know
- iOS 17 now allows you to enable a new “Fast” setting for Haptic Touch on an iPhone.
- The new “Fast” setting on iOS 17 makes Haptic Touch even more responsive than on iOS 16 or older versions.
- To make room for the new “Fast” setting, Apple has renamed the older “Fast” setting from iOS 16 to “Default” on the new version, thus offering a total of three Haptic Touch settings – Fast, Default, and Slow.
Haptic Touch, previously 3D Touch, has been on iPhone for a long time offering users easy access to an app’s actions without even needing to open the app. You can use Haptic Touch by long-pressing on an app or interactive icon on your iPhone at which point you’ll see an overflow menu with a bunch of shortcuts related to the item you’re interacting with.
What is Fast Haptic Touch on iOS 17?
Apple allows you the ability to choose how fast Haptic Touch overflow menus appear on the screen when you log-press an app or icon. Until iOS 16, Apple only allowed you to change this speed to Fast and Slow but on iOS 17 beta 2, there are now three options you can choose from – Fast, Default, and Slow.
It appears that the new “Default” setting behaves the same way as the “Fast” setting on iOS 16. The new “Fast” setting, however, is faster than the other two options by a significant margin, showing context menus at least a couple hundred milliseconds faster than the older “Fast” setting. If you’re having a hard time following how each of these settings works, here’s a short pointed summary:
- iOS 17 “Fast” – faster animation than iOS 16 “Fast”
- iOS 17 “Default” – the same speed as iOS 16 “Fast”
- iOS 17 “Slow” – the same speed as iOS 16 “Slow”
In short, iOS 17’s Default and Slow options are the same ones that have existed previously with the new Fast option offering much more responsive feedback than any of the other options.
How to enable Fast Haptic Touch on iPhone with iOS 17
To make the Haptic Touch speed faster than before, make sure your iPhone is running on iOS 17 beta 2 or newer versions by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Note: At the time of writing, iOS 17 is only available as a developer preview, so we suggest you wait for a beta or public release to avoid running into issues or bugs in the software.
To enable Fast Haptic Touch, open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Inside Settings, scroll down and select Accessibility.
On the Accessibility screen, tap on Touch under “Physical and Motor”.
Here, tap on Haptic Touch.
On the next screen, select Fast under “Touch Duration”.
With this option selected, you can test how fast the new response time is by long-pressing on the flower image inside the “Touch Duration Test” section.
What happens when you enable Fast Haptic Touch?
When you select “Fast” as your preferred Haptic Touch option on iOS 17, you’re increasing the speed at which the context menu appears on the screen after a long-press action. This means the overflow menu that pops up when you tap and hold on an app icon or an in-app button will show up in a shorter time (taking at least 200 milliseconds lesser) than in previous versions.
This can change the overall interactive experience of the iOS interface as options and menus will be more responsive than before. The move to making Haptic Touch a tad faster makes this experience feel a lot like how 3D Touch worked on older iPhone models. By making Haptic Touch more responsive, your iPhone can now mimic 3D Touch’s pressure-sensitive activation but this may sometimes also lead to false activations if your iPhone registers accidental touches.
That’s all you need to know about enabling “Fast” Haptic Touch on iPhone with iOS 17.
