Force Touch on iPhone 6s to Make iPhone Interactions Faster With Focus on 'Shortcuts'

Rumors have all but confirmed the upcoming iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus will include Force Touch, allowing the device to distinguish between a light tap and a deeper press to enable a wide range of new gestures.

Force Touch has been built into the Apple Watch and the trackpads of the Retina MacBook and the newest Retina MacBook Pros, adding a whole new dimension to the way the devices are controlled. On the Apple Watch, Force Touch is used within apps to access different settings, and on the Mac, it can do things like previewing links in Safari, and accelerating rewind/fast forward speed in iMovie.

force-touch-iphone-6
Force Touch on the iPhone will work similarly to the way that it works on the existing devices that offer Force Touch, but there are some differences, according to information an inside source shared with 9to5Mac. Force Touch on the iPhone is said to be used primarily for "shortcut actions," letting users perform tasks within apps more quickly.

In Maps, for example, using Force Touch on a point of interest will cause turn-by-turn directions to start up immediately, while force pressing on a song in the Music app will bring up a menu to save it to a playlist. Force pressing on certain apps on the Home Screen could open directly to specific sections of the app.

Another feature in testing, according to one source, are shortcuts that appear after Force Touching an app icon on the Home screen. For example, if a user deep presses on the Phone app icon, he could choose to shortcut directly to the Voicemail tab. This could also apply to deep pressing the News app icon and being taken directly to either the Favorites or For You tabs.

Aside from Force Touch, the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus will feature an A9 processor with 2GB of RAM, a revamped camera system with a 12-megapixel camera, improved Touch ID, and a chassis made of a new material with reinforcements at the weak points that previously caused some iPhones to bend. Rumors suggest the addition of Force Touch and the new reinforcements will cause the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus to be 0.2mm thicker, a change that will be hardly noticeable to most users.

Related Forum: iPhone

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
Mac Studio Feature

Apple Begins Selling Refurbished Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips at a Discount

Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March. As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
m4 macbook air pink

Apple Now Selling Refurbished M4 MacBook Air Models

Friday June 13, 2025 3:34 pm PDT by
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year. Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...

Top Rated Comments

motulist Avatar
129 months ago
Force touch doesnt seem different than a long press.
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
129 months ago
And thanks to the protruding camera, Force Touch users can look forward to:



Attachment Image
Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dojoman Avatar
129 months ago
Looks like something new for Samsung to copy.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macduke Avatar
129 months ago
On the Apple Watch, Force Touch can determine various levels of pressure. For instance, try slowly pushing down on the watch face. You can move it in and out based on how hard you press. I hope this capability is robust enough that Apple could unveil an API for it so that drawing apps can take advantage of the pressure sensitivity.

I hope that we are able to Force Touch things we can’t usually tap. The article mentions home screen icons, which is a neat idea. But imagine being able to Force Touch various status bar icons to quickly perform various actions—although admittedly the tap target sizes for those icons are really small so that may never happen. We could also FT notifications on our home screen to bring up a menu to do various things (more options than we have now). Or Force Touch on the clock on the home screen to see our calendar or next meeting.

As far as various potential home screen actions, I could see:

FT on Settings to quickly change a customizable set of things
FT on Calendar to quickly see your next meeting information
FT on Notes to quickly jot something down
FT on Camera to instantly take a picture or start recording a video
FT on Maps to start directions home
FT on Music to start your favorite playlist or station
FT on Reminders to quickly make a new reminder to your default list

I could go on, but I hope that they give us the ability to customize actions that can be taken when we FT different icons and third party apps as well.

As for things we could do inside of apps, it would be nice if we could FT any image anywhere in iOS and get options to share or have it default share or save it to our preferred service. Or FT a website URL or URL bar to save it to a reading list or to Pocket. I could also see FT on emails being useful if Apple would build in additional capabilities to use our inbox like a to-do list. FT could enable that without over-complicating the interface. It would be neat to FT a phone number to quickly set a reminder to call that number, add it to contacts, etc. The same could be done for other actionable information.

Another idea is that you could FT the keyboard to switch between modes for numeric, or third party keyboards, or emoji, etc. Or you could FT on Control Center to view another layer of controls. Or FT on a control center toggle to quickly switch it out with a list of other toggles that fly out in a circle around your finger. Or FT on any text input field and instantly start speaking to use dictation. Oh man there are so many fun things you could do!

I also hope that we get some kind of Taptic Engine feedback when typing—as long as it feels right—but I don’t know if that would drain the battery or wear out the parts faster.
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Serban Avatar
129 months ago
it is the begining for the big one iPhone 7. They need force touch for them to remove the home button. but they need same sapphire cover so this mean sapphire instead of gorila glass and this force touch. This is the only way that can be operated like a home button without one. because force touch is not a 100% software based so if your app is frozen you can force touch and come back to home screen like you do with your home button now.
So this force touch is forward thinking for the iP7. Like they did with ios7 and iphone 6, swipe left/right and with iphone 6 curved screen to be more fluent experience
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
penajmz Avatar
129 months ago
If this is the only main thing on that iPhone I will be skipping. But 2GB ram and I'm in.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)