I Hated the Apple Intelligence Button on My iPhone 16. Here’s How I Turned It Off for Good

I am a long -standing fan of Apple and I was so excited to go to an iPhone 16 last fall. After spending five years with my beloved iPhone 11, but obsolete, I was ready for all the usual advantages: better battery life, more pleasant cameras and, the most exciting for me, a new pink barbie color. But what I did not expect is that a new addition would threaten my whole experience with my brand new phone.

If you’ve spent an older iPhone in recent years, you may have been surprised to see two new buttons on more recent devices, action and camera control buttons. The action button is a small button above volume experts. It was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro models and is a customizable button that can do anything, activating your ringtone to order your Dunkin ‘coffee. He is small, wise and takes care of his own things.

It is the camera control button that causes all chaos.

Camera control is a new button in the iPhone 16 range that does what the name suggests: it controls your camera. It is intended to help you take photos quickly and serves a shortcut to launch your camera application. You can slide your finger in a mini settings menu to adjust the zoom in your camera, among others. But there is a real reason for the existence of the button: AI.

Like all other technological companies, Apple has largely invested in artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence was the engine of a large part of the company’s innovation. The camera control button, for example, is the physical path of visual intelligence, a new feature supplied by the AI ​​which allows you to use your camera to scan objects in the real world to get more information on them. It seems elegant, but it’s completely useless for me, and it is a feature that I have never been invited to use.

There are other use cases for the camera control button, including the means to customize the settings of your button, as my colleagues have found it thanks to their tests. But that does not change the fact that my camera control button is so completely boring.

It is a long button, the size of the power button, located at the bottom right of the device. And it’s very, very easy to type by accident. I opened my camera while putting my phone in my pocket, while I drive and I use navigation applications and once I went out my phone for the night, which left the camera application open all night and emptied the battery on my phone.

And if that was not boring enough, whenever I intended to open my camera via the camera control, it took several taps to do it. Go represent.

Although the camera command is activated, my camera roll included superb photos like these:

I ask you: what is the interest of a button that works when you don’t need it and don’t work when you do it? There are already three ways to access the camera of your iPhone from the locking screen which takes literal seconds to use. Camera control is a very expensive and very unreliable addition to the iPhone 16, all for the features of AI that many people do not need or do not use. There has not been a moment since I turned off control of the camera that I missed it.

I realize that my reproaches with camera control are minor complaints among what was a global positive experience with my new phone. But as an AI journalist, I can’t help but see this as a disturbing sign. So many technological companies have revised their software and devices to be adapted to AI, whether it is Google that spams us with Gemini contextual windows in each Google application, the new COPILOT button on Microsoft Windows laptops or the Apple camera control button.

Technological companies are too eager to get on the AI ​​train and have not thought of improving whether these features improve or simply derail our experience using their products. And not enough deactivation offer options. Fortunately for me and my camera bread, Apple does it. But I hope that in the future, such drastic measures will not be necessary because companies are more intentional with their AI characteristics.

If you want to join me to make the observation of the camera control button, you can access your iPhone settings and select camera. Then type Camera control. Camera control within the camera accessibilityand then Switch the camera control. If you also experience hyper-sensitivity, you can adjust the number of taps (and the necessary pressure) to trigger the button in this same accessibility page under light strength.

To find out more, see our practical experience with the iPhone 16 Pro and our list of IOS 19 wishes.