> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.tsamoudakis.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Your camera button doesn't have to open the Camera - URL: https://www.tsamoudakis.com/your-camera-button-doesnt-have-to-open-the-camera/ - Published: 2026-10-20T15:50:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T15:50:48.000Z - Description: Your iPhone's Camera Control can open apps other than the Camera. Why I set mine to open Claude, how to change yours, and why some apps never appear in the list. - Author: Panos Tsamoudakis - Tags: iOS I recently upgraded to the iPhone 18 Pro, and once again the camera was the big upgrade. So I did what I always do with a new phone: opened Settings, went into Camera, and worked through every screen to see what had changed. I've been in Settings → Camera → Camera Control plenty of times before. This time, the list at the top caught my eye. The button that opens the Camera can open other apps instead, and a few apps I use every day were sitting right there. The option has been around since iOS 18 shipped with the iPhone 16 in 2024\. I'd walked past it every time, because I assumed I already knew what that screen did. ## The button was doing a job that was already covered Up until now, a click on Camera Control opened Apple's Camera. That's the default, and it's what most people want. But the Camera already has a quick way in. Swipe left on the Lock Screen, and you're there, no button needed. That swipe is why I'd already replaced the Camera button in the Lock Screen's bottom-right corner with a [Todoist](https://www.tsamoudakis.com/how-i-use-todoist-to-organise-my-life/) control, so I can add tasks faster than ever. My one dedicated hardware button was a second shortcut to an app I could reach with a single gesture. Any button you can reassign deserves the same check. If its current job is handled somewhere else, the button is free. ## What I set it to I lean on Claude more and more every day. I'm still not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad one, but it's true. It's also gotten so good at reading photos that it often notices things in a shot faster than I do. Photographing something for Claude used to take a few steps: unlock the phone, find the app, start a chat, tap the camera, then take the shot. Now it's one press. Claude opens with the camera ready, I capture whatever I'm looking at, and it goes straight into a conversation. The other day I spotted a recipe on the back of a package. I pressed the button, took a photo, and asked Claude to add the ingredients to my supermarket list in Todoist. It got every item right, and the whole thing was done in seconds. Setting it up takes a minute: - Open **Settings → Camera → Camera Control**. - Under **Launch Camera**, tap the app name (Camera, by default) and pick the app you want. - Choose **Single Click** or **Double Click**. I went with single click because it's easier and faster. - Decide on **Require Screen On**. With it on, pressing the button on a dark screen only wakes the phone, and a second press opens the app. I turned that last one off, and it's a setting I'd been hunting for long before I noticed the app list. No wonder I couldn't find it: when Apple added it in iOS 18.2, it lived under Display & Brightness, and it has since moved to the Camera Control page. A camera button is only useful if it does its job the moment you press it. With Require Screen On switched off, I can click the button while the phone is still coming out of my jacket pocket, and by the time it's in my hand, it's ready to shoot. The tradeoff is a higher chance of accidental launches from a pocket, which is the problem Apple added the toggle to solve. ![iPhone Camera Control settings in iOS 27 with Single Click selected and Require Screen On off, next to the Launch Camera app list with Claude selected](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/72/e1727581-3411-494e-b727-d5894a93d7ac/content/images/2026/10/044-camera-control-settings.jpg.jpg) ## Why Claude is on the list at all Scrolling through that list, I noticed the apps that were missing as much as the ones that were there. Plenty of apps on my phone use the camera, and most of them don't appear. The reason takes a quick look under the hood, so bear with me for a couple of paragraphs. Apple's Camera has always been able to open on a locked phone. Other apps can't, unless their developers build a small companion version that's allowed to run before you unlock. Apple calls it a Locked Camera Capture extension, and keeps it on a short leash: it can't go online, it can't dip into the main app's data, and whatever it captures is cleared once you close it. Think of it as a viewfinder and a shutter button, and not much else. That companion is the ticket onto the list. Pro camera apps like Halide and Blackmagic Camera have built one, and so have Instagram, Snapchat, and Claude. An app without it never shows up, however much it uses the camera. It also explains why the button works so well with Claude, even on a locked phone. The click opens Claude's camera instantly, because the small version handles that part. Anything that needs the internet, like adding a recipe's ingredients to Todoist, waits for the full app, which means unlocking. With Face ID, I'm usually looking at the screen by then anyway, so the handoff barely registers. ## Check what yours is doing If your iPhone has Camera Control, open Settings → Camera → Camera Control and look at the list. You might find an app you'd forgotten you had, or one you'd reach for far more often if it were a single press away. And ask whether your button is doing a job something else already covers. Last month I wrote about [a macOS setting I'd walked past for twenty years](https://www.tsamoudakis.com/stop-your-downloads-folder-from-filling-up-with-zips/). This is the iPhone edition, and I doubt it's the last. So tell me yours. Which setting or menu did you stumble on recently that changed how you work? Reply with what you found and what it changed.