Did you come from a 6 or something and jump over the 7? A 7's what I have now and it has that so-called virtual home button that doesn't really press. I admit it was a little odd at first, but it took me only about 5 minutes to get to grips with it. It's not that bad, and it won't wear out like the one on my dad's 6S that's kind of jenk, I mean, it still works, but its kind of jenk. I don't really want an 8 or an X, I'm content with my 7, but I'd be interested to hear from people who have had the 7 and have since upgraded to the 8 if the home button works differently.

I think your major issue is probably yourself. What I mean by that is it doesn't work the way you expect it to, so you get frustrated, then its not working because you're not really thinking about what you're doing, so you get angry, now your judgement is clouded and making any learning exercise null and void. Trust me, I speak from experience lol.

I still have reachability on even though I don't use it, but I only trigger it accidentally every once in a while. I don't have any trouble getting the app switcher to pop up, or to switch on or off voice over, or to bring up apple pay on the lock screen etc. What I would recommend you do is go into the home button area, like you said, turn that strength all the way up, and  you can practice in that area without affecting anything. The home button will not take you home in that practice area, so you have to hit back or done or whatever it is before the home button will work again for that purpose. But you can practice using it and double and triple tapping and stuff.

Yeah its like 5 minutes screwing around, then its nbd after that.

Well, need to find someone's contact details necessitated that I pulled out my Iphone today and  my haste at trying to unlock the thing helped hugely, as  Simba's advice about pretending that it is actually a button .

I assumed with all the talk of touch id and fingerprint recognition, that essentially the home button was a miniature touch screen, and that I needed to tap it the way I'd tap  using vo.

When I followed simba's suggestion, rested my finger on the button and pushed, just as I used to do with my Iphone 5, I felt the haptic feedback kick in, indeed it feels as if the button is mechanical even though it isn't, which is actually a bit freaky.

Still, glad it's fixed now, and hopefully I can catch up on some of those Iphone games I missed out on for the last while, in particular black box and hoobodle and some of the blindfold titles which are sorely in need of db entries.

Right, anything you put on top of it, like the corner of your shirt, a blanket, whatever, it will no longer work. Also, if you shut down the phone, you can keep pressing the button until it no longer kicks in the haptics, which is semi-amusing. You do have to give it a firm press, but you always know when you have it, because of that clicky vibration thing.

If you meant harnessing the haptic engine, probably, if you meant using the home button in other ways, probably not. It's all down to what the API / swift lets you do. I can't see Apple, who are very closed and restrictive, let an app mess with the way the home button works.