{"id":50402,"date":"2025-12-11T15:41:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=50402"},"modified":"2026-03-03T11:40:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:40:26","slug":"hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/11\/hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden Setting Controls Tap-a-Call in Phone App"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2025\/12\/07\/hidden-setting-controls-what-happens-when-you-tap-a-call-in-the-phone-app\/\">Adam Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2025\/12\/07\/hidden-setting-controls-what-happens-when-you-tap-a-call-in-the-phone-app\/\">\n<p>Put simply, an interface shouldn&rsquo;t make it too easy to perform a destructive action or create more work for you, and inadvertent calls can easily create more work. You may prefer a different behavior than I do, but I hope we can all agree that it&rsquo;s good to have a choice of whether a tap on a recent call initiates a callback or opens its associated contact.<\/p>\n<p>But isn&rsquo;t it weird that the way you toggle the tap-a-call behavior is by switching the Phone app&rsquo;s view? What if you like Unified view but prefer that tapping a recent call starts a callback rather than opening a contact?<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Here&rsquo;s the odd part: if you switch the Phone app to Classic view and then return to Settings, the Tap Recents to Call switch disappears, and Hold Assist Detection slides up. [&#8230;] This is deeply wrong. &ldquo;User interface elements should not come and go based on settings adjusted elsewhere,&rdquo; said Paul Kafasis, while holding his nose and fanning the air with his hand, in an exaggerated gesture of disgust aimed at Apple.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/10\/ios-26-announced\/\">iOS 26 Announced<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app-update-2026-02-02\">Update (<a href=\"#hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app-update-2026-02-02\">2026-02-02<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2026\/01\/28\/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2026\/01\/28\/comparing-the-classic-and-unified-views-in-ios-26s-phone-app\">\n<p>I&rsquo;d argue that Apple <em>used<\/em> to offer options like this all the time. The Music app on the original iPhone (which app was actually named &ldquo;iPod&rdquo; for a while) let you customize all the tabs at the bottom. All of Apple&rsquo;s good Mac apps (the AppKit ones, primarily) still let you <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/guide\/mac-help\/customize-toolbars-mchlb294260e\/mac\">customize the entire toolbar<\/a>. The problem isn&rsquo;t that Apple now offers two very different interfaces for the Phone app. The problem is that Apple stopped offering users ways to significantly tailor apps to their own needs and tastes&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;and the proof that they stopped is that so many people now think it&rsquo;s so strange that they&rsquo;re offering two options for how the Phone app should look and work.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>No need to dig two or three levels deep into the Settings app. You can just switch right there in the main screen of the Phone app itself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I tried the new design for a while, and it&rsquo;s fine, but I decided I prefer the old, ununified view.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app-update-2026-03-03\">Update (<a href=\"#hidden-setting-controls-tap-a-call-in-phone-app-update-2026-03-03\">2026-03-03<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2026\/02\/sometimes_hidden_setting_phone_app\">John Gruber<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@daringfireball\/116143966263047714\">Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2026\/02\/sometimes_hidden_setting_phone_app\">\n<p>Engst really likes this aspect of the Unified view, because the old behavior made it too easy to initiate a call accidentally, just by tapping on a row in the list. I&rsquo;ve made many of those accidental calls the same way, and so I prefer the new Unified behavior for the same reason. Classic&rsquo;s tap-almost-anywhere-in-the-row-to-start-a-call behavior is a vestige of some decisions with the original iPhone that haven&rsquo;t held up over the intervening 20 years. With the original iPhone, Apple was still stuck&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;correctly, probably!&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;in the mindset that the iPhone was first and foremost a cellular telephone, and initiating phone calls should be a primary one-tap action. No one thinks of the iPhone as primarily a telephone these days, and it just isn&rsquo;t iOS-y to have an action initiate just by tapping anywhere in a row in a scrolling list. You don&rsquo;t tap on an email message to reply to it. You tap a Reply button.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Engst and I discussed this at length during <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/thetalkshow\/2026\/02\/25\/ep-441\">his appearance on The Talk Show earlier this week<\/a>. Especially after talking it through with him on the show, I think I understand both what Apple was thinking, and also why their solution feels so wrong.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s a conflict here. You can&rsquo;t have the two views default to different row-tapping behavior if one single switch applies to both views.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The confusion would be eliminated if the Classic\/Unified toggle were mirrored in Settings. That would make it clear why &ldquo;Tap Recents to Call&rdquo; only appears when you&rsquo;re using Unified&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;because your choice to use Unified (or Classic) would be right there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Gte\/116156207906900852\">Guy English<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Gte\/116156207906900852\">\n<p>That the phone part of iPhone is so weird and requires esoteric knowledge and a &ldquo;Classic&rdquo; switch is bananas.<\/p><p>John called me a few weeks ago and somehow I fumbled the notification, then I tried to call him back and couldn&rsquo;t work it out, and finally he just called me again. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adam Engst: Put simply, an interface shouldn&rsquo;t make it too easy to perform a destructive action or create more work for you, and inadvertent calls can easily create more work. You may prefer a different behavior than I do, but I hope we can all agree that it&rsquo;s good to have a choice of whether [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-12-11T20:41:43Z","apple_news_api_id":"28566e75-6b02-4105-b3df-4c9fdde44acc","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-03T16:40:32Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AKFZudWsCQQWz30yf3eRKzA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,31,2741,1454],"class_list":["post-50402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-design","tag-ios","tag-ios-26","tag-phone-app"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50402"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51132,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50402\/revisions\/51132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}