Understand how Home works on the iPhone X and later

- [Instructor] iOS 12 is capable of running on iPhones dating as far back as the iPhone 5s and iPads as far back as the original iPad Air and the iPad Mini 2, all of which were releases in 2013. So even if you had your device for several years, you can take advantage of the latest operating system for your iPhone or iPad and with a few exceptions, you'll have access to almost all the features that appear on the more modern iOS devices. Now one important thing to be aware of is that with the release of the iPhone X in late 2017, iPhones no longer come with a home button.

The home button is the button found on the bottom of older iPhones, like we see here on the right, but on the iPhone X and later, that button was removed, freeing up that room to let the screen extend all the way to the bottom of the device. Now the home button has a lot of different uses, but the primary use is for it to take you back to your home screen, which is the screen we're currently looking at on both devices. So if I were to tap to open an app on both of these phones, say Safari, to go back to the home screen on the older phone, I just press the home button. On the iPhone X and later, notice this bar at the bottom of the screen.

This is the home indicator. To get back to your home screen, you swipe up on it. So that's pretty much the difference between going home on older devices and going home on devices without a home button. Be aware that in some apps that home indicator will fade away so as not to cover the content you're viewing on the screen until you tap the screen again. And there are a couple of other differences between using the home button and the home indicator, but I'll be pointing those out as the come up in this course.