Technologies

My Best iPhone Hack: Turn Off Your Camera Control Button for Good. Here’s How

Commentary: I hated the camera control button on my iPhone, so I used these settings to make it entirely decorative.

As a lifelong Apple fan, I was excited to finally upgrade to a newer iPhone after my beloved but worn iPhone 11 died. There’s a lot to like about the newer models, including the iPhone 16, with one major exception. One feature continually harassed me and made my phone difficult to use. Disabling this one feature has made all the difference for me to enjoy using my phone again, and it can for you, too.

Coming from an older iPhone model, I was surprised to see two new buttons on the 16: the action and camera control buttons. The action button is a small button above the volume adjusters. It was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro models and is a customizable button that can do anything from turning your ringer on to ordering coffee from Dunkin’ to go. It’s small, demure and minds its own business. It’s the camera control button that caused all the chaos.

Camera control is a new button on the iPhone 16 lineup that does what exactly the name suggests: It controls your camera. It’s meant to help you quickly snap photos and serves as a shortcut to launching your camera app. You can slide your finger on a mini settings menu to adjust camera zoom, among other settings. But there’s one true reason for its existence: AI. All of the iPhone 17 models have this button as well.

Like every other tech company, Apple is heavily investing in artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence has been the driving force behind much of the company’s innovation, with lots of AI updates in the new iOS 26. But there’s no bigger sign of Apple’s deep dive into AI than the camera control button. It’s the physical pathway to Visual Intelligence, a new AI-powered feature that allows you to use your camera to scan objects in the real world to get more information on them. It sounds snazzy, but this is completely pointless to me, and it’s a feature I have never been enticed to use.

There are other use cases for the camera control button, including ways to customize button settings, as my colleagues have found through their testing. But that doesn’t change the fact that my camera control button is so completely annoying.

It’s a long button, about the size of the power button, located on the lower right side of the device. And it’s very, very easy to tap by accident. I’ve opened my camera while putting my phone in my pocket, while I’m driving and using navigation apps and once as I was turning off my phone for the night, which left the camera app open the whole night and drained my phone’s battery.

And if that wasn’t annoying enough, every time I actually intended to open my camera via camera control, it took several taps to do so. Go figure. While I had camera control enabled, my camera roll included stunning shots like these:

My question: What is the point of a button that works when you don’t need it and doesn’t work when you do? There are already three different ways to access your iPhone camera from the lock screen that take just seconds to use. Camera control is a very expensive and very unreliable addition to the newer iPhones, all for the sake of AI features that many people don’t need or use. And there hasn’t been one moment since I turned camera control off that I’ve missed it.

I realize that my gripes with camera control are minor complaints among what has been an overall positive experience with a new phone. But as an AI reporter, I can’t help but see this as a troubling sign. So many tech companies have overhauled their software and devices to be AI-friendly, whether it’s Google spamming us with Gemini pop-ups in every single Google app, the new Copilot button on Microsoft Windows laptops or Apple’s camera control button.

Tech companies too eager to get on the AI train and haven’t given enough thought to whether those features enhance or just derail our experience using their products. And not enough offer opt-out options. Thankfully for me and my camera roll, Apple does. But I hope in the future, such drastic measures won’t be necessary as companies become more intentional with their AI-enabling features.

If you want to join me in making your camera control button obsolete, navigate to your iPhone settings and select camera. Then, tap camera control. Within camera control, select accessibility, then toggle off camera control. If you’re also experiencing the hyper-sensitivity, you can adjust how many taps (and the pressure needed) to trigger the button in that same accessibility page under light-press force.

For more, check out our hands-on experience with the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.

Technologies

ByteDance’s AI Video Tool Seedance 2.0 Reportedly Delayed Amid Hollywood Pressure

The global rollout of the video tool, which sparked panic with its cinema-quality AI-generated video, appears to be delayed.

China’s ByteDance is delaying the global rollout of its Seedance 2.0 video-generating AI model, according to a report from The Information.

When it debuted in China in February, Seedance 2.0 caused a stir, as high-quality AI-generated videos made with the new model flooded social media, featuring existing actors and familiar intellectual property, including Tom Cruise and Star Wars. Unlike typical AI slop — or even advanced video from other AI-generation models — some of the Seedance-generated videos posted looked photorealistic enough to be mistaken for footage from big-budget Hollywood films or TV shows.

The model was expected to be rolled out to other countries by mid-March, but according to the report, ByteDance is working on ways to address legal and copyright issues that would arise in countries outside China.

Hollywood studios and unions did not react kindly to the videos that surfaced online in February.

The Motion Picture Association demanded that ByteDance «immediately cease its infringing activity,» referring to copyrighted works that appear to be used in training the model.

Labor union SAG-AFTRA, representing Hollywood performers, said it also condemned the Seedance model, pointing to the danger that the AI model could pose to actors’ careers in a statement. The union noted: «Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent.»

Representatives for ByteDance and SAG-AFTRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What’s different about Seedance 2.0

Like many other industries, the entertainment world is being upended by AI technologies, with concerns that tools will put human creatives out of work.

As AI-generated video content, animation, screenwriting and other forms evolve rapidly, popular photo and video generators are getting heat for propagating deepfakes and relying on copyrighted content. Many would have trouble spotting an AI-generated actress as fake, and viewers could easily confuse some AI-generated cinema with Marvel movies or other full-blown Hollywood productions.

While other AI-generators tools such as OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Veo can quickly make videos good enough for casual social media use, Seedance 2.0 appears to be able to bypass some of the usual tells of AI video — text appears clear and not garbled, faces look convincingly human and there aren’t extra fingers or other strange AI hallucinations you might find in other AI video models. One viral example of this was «Will Smith Eating Spaghetti,» in which Seedance 2.0 created a video that convincingly depicted the actor eating a plate of pasta.

The degree of realism that makes footage practically indistinguishable from traditionally produced film and video is a prime reason why movie and TV studios have cause for concern.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 17, #1010

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 17, No. 1,010.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. I didn’t see the purple connection at all. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Bad scene.

Green group hint: Sing out.

Blue group hint: Like rope, kind of.

Purple group hint: So fast!

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Metaphors for trouble.

Green group: Music theory concepts.

Blue group: Things with strings.

Purple group: Metaphors for quickness.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is metaphors for trouble. The four answers are bind, hot water, jam and pickle.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is music theory concepts. The four answers are key, pitch, scale and tone.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is things with strings. The four answers are balloon, kite, tea bag and yo-yo.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is metaphors for quickness. The four answers are arrow, lightning, rocket and wind.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for March 17 #744

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 17, No. 744.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is fun and timely. Once you see the answers pop up in a special color, the theme will become obvious. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: The color of the holiday.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

LIGHTER, OGRE, GREEN, GREET, GREETER, GORE, GORY, MORE, TEEN

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers: