We’ve all experienced a power outage at home, or perhaps dropped our car keys right next to a dark sidewalk, or tried to find the charger cable under the bed at midnight. In any of these scenarios, a flashlight would be very useful. However, nowadays we no longer buy them separately, but our cell phones have one built in. It’s an extremely useful tool, but the process of turning it on can be frustrating.
After all, you have to wake up the screen, unlock it, go to the quick settings menu, and then tap the right icon. It makes us long for a time when you could just pick up a flashlight, find the button, and simply press it. Fortunately, Android has the necessary settings to create a command shortcut and turn on the flashlight without even having to unlock the screen. Does that sound useful? Let’s take a look at a tutorial on how to do that on your phone.
How to activate the Android flashlight with a shortcut
Believe it or not, this feature is known as “Back Tap,” and it’s a breakthrough in smartphone accessibility.
But before you panic because you know there’s no button on the back of your phone, don’t worry, it doesn’t need a real physical button. Instead, the mobile device uses a set of highly sensitive internal sensors: accelerometers and gyroscopes. These are capable of detecting that you are making a very specific pattern with your finger.
These sensors, which normally measure the movement and orientation of the phone, can also be used to detect the distinct and rapid vibration pattern produced by a double tap on the back. Once you have taught it this gesture, the software interprets this vibration as a command and executes the assigned action (in this case, turning the flashlight on or off).
Detailed Tutorial: Google Pixel
- Open Settings.
- Scroll down to the System section.
- Once there, select “Gestures.”
- Find and click on “Quick Tap to start actions.”
- From the list of available options, select Toggle flashlight.
Extra tip: be aware that sometimes an accidental tap on your phone while it’s in your pocket can turn on the flashlight unintentionally. To avoid these annoying unexpected flashes—or being accused of taking photos with flash—we recommend activating a security setting. Look for the “Require stronger taps” option, so that the phone will require a firmer, more deliberate tap to execute the gesture.
Tutorial for Samsung Galaxy
Samsung Galaxy phones can also use the double-tap gesture for the flashlight, but the setup process is slightly different. On Samsung, it does not appear in the standard settings menu, but the feature is added again as a module in its official customization suite. This setting requires the latest Galaxy devices to run One UI 5.0 (based on Android 13) or higher. Steps to set up Back-Tap with RegiStar:
- Download the main Good Lock app from the Galaxy Store (not the Google Store).
- Once installed, open Good Lock, go to the Life up tab, and download and install the module called RegiStar.
- Open RegiStar and select the “Back-Tap action” setting.
- Toggle the switch to enable the gesture: you can choose between a “double tap” or a “triple tap” to turn on the flashlight.
- One advantage of using RegiStar is flexibility. If you experience too many accidental turn-ons, you can configure the gesture to require a Triple Tap instead of a double tap.
Interestingly, other brands such as Motorola have chosen to integrate a completely different gesture to turn on the flashlight. This is the “Double Chop,” a very intuitive motion of shaking the phone from side to side that has been a favorite of Motorola users for years to turn on the flashlight.
Brands such as OnePlus often use Off-Screen Gestures. These require drawing a letter, such as a ‘V’, on the screen when it is asleep to turn on the flashlight. However each person turns on their cell phone flashlight, the truth is that it has saved us from many stumbles in the dark. Our ancestors would be amazed to see us using a light source that does not depend on oil or candles, and which has a much lower risk of fire!