The iPhone X Literally Changed How We Use Our Devices

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Welcome to a new series called Apple a Day, where sites in the CNET family are sharing pieces of Apple content from our archives—an article, review and/or video—daily from now through late September. In addition to Lifehacker, this series will include pieces from our sibling sites PCMag, Mashable, CNET, and Popular Science.

By 2017, some of us had been using iPhones for 10 years—a whole decade building muscle memory, all of it based around the Home button. Press once to go home; press twice to open the app switcher; long-press to call up Siri; press in tandem with the power button to take a screenshot: These actions became so innate, you didn't think twice about using them—at least, not until the Home button disappeared.

That was the year Apple released the iPhone X, introducing the device's most radical change since its first iteration. (Perhaps only to be surpassed this year by the iPhone Duo.) It's funny to think about it today, but back in 2017, the iPhone X's single pane of glass was disruptive, to say the least. Where was the Home button? Without it, how could you do anything? That confusion inspired Lifehacker to publish "The iPhone X Gestures You Should Master," a guide to navigating your newly designed iPhone.

We had to learn to swipe up from the bottom of the display to go home; to swipe along the bottom to switch from app to app; to swipe down from the top right to access Control Center; to swipe down from the top left to access Notification Center. We even had to relearn reachability: Instead of lightly double-tapping the Home button to bring the screen down, you had to swipe down on the bottom of the display.

Reviewing these things now, it all seems so obvious, even second nature. Nearly another decade has passed since we published that story, and by now, most iOS users are accostumed to a Home button-free life. But looking through the comments on this nearly decade-old piece, it's clear the transition was anything but smooth. One user complained about how smartphone gestures were making everything more confusing. Another bemoaned how switching between their iPhone and iPad meant jumping between two different gesture systems. Fast forward to 2026, and it's near impossible to imagine going back.

Apple didn't immediately stop making iPhones with Home buttons—it also released the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus the same year as the iPhone X—but the writing was on the wall. Soon after, only the SE line shipped with the old design, and even iPads adopted an edge-to-edge display.

With the launch of the iPhone 16e in 2025, Apple officially retired the once-essential Home button. Though you can still buy and use second-hand devices that have one (the 2022 iPhone SE can even run iOS 27), it's clear the company has moved on, and the gestures once so foreign they once prompted us to publish a guide to their use are now as innate as doing things the old way. Perhaps in another 10 years, wearables and hand gestures will have changed everything again, and we'll look back with nostalgia on an era when we had to touch our devices at all.