iOS 14 comes with a lot of new features. I'm sure you've seen a lot of customized Home screens on social media by this point (and plenty of jokes from Android users along the way). It's easily one of the biggest updates for the mobile operating system to date, especially when it comes to user customization and choice. And that's a good thing that definitely falls into the "better late than never" category.

But what about the back tap?

It's easy to forget that some new features exist at all, especially if it's not something that would immediately be of interest to you. But then you try it out and it turns out to be pretty great. For me, that's the back tap feature Apple introduced with iOS 14. It's part of the company's Accessibility features, so it's not immediately discoverable. But, once you find it and try it out, you might be happy with the results.

The back tap feature makes it so that you can launch certain elements of the software by either double- or triple-tapping the back of the handset. I'll just get this out of the way: it works most of the time the way it should. I have definitely run into a few instances where it hasn't worked as well as I would have liked, but most of the time it's fine.

To find it, you'll need to open the Settings app, then tap Accessibility and then scroll down to Touch. Scroll down in there until you find Back Tap and then choose that. Once in you'll be able to choose the number of back taps you want to use to call on certain elements. For me, I've got the double-tap to bring up Control Center, and the triple tap actually activates a Shazam shortcut. (This made me laugh since Apple is adding a Shazam feature to Control Center in the incoming iOS 14.2 update.)

But there are a lot of options. You can tap the back of your phone to launch the app switcher, or lock your screen, or drop down the Notification Center. Want to take a screenshot without having to use the side buttons? Just tap the back of your phone. And you can build Siri Shortcuts to take advantage of the back tap, too, broadening its capabilities even further.

One of my favorite things about some Android phones out there, especially the Pixel lineup, is being able to swipe down over the rear fingerprint sensor to bring down the notification shade. This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's close, and when it works it's absolutely worth it.

So, I'm curious: are you already using the back tap feature on your iPhone? If so, how do you have it set up? If you didn't know about it, will you try it out now? Let me know!