The chances of replacing Siri as the iPhone’s default voice assistant are basically zero. But there’s a way to quickly access Bing Chat on iPhone that you probably haven’t thought of.
Like Siri, you can launch this from anywhere on your iPhone, regardless of which app you’re in at the time. It doesn’t go directly to Bing Chat though, there’s an extra tap, but I can’t think of a faster way.
Installation is minimal and includes using the Shortcuts app. But when you’re done, you can simply tap the back of your iPhone to open Bing.
Before you start
To do this, there are some prerequisites that you need to be aware of before you begin. The first is that you can only use Back Tap on iPhones starting with the iPhone 8.
Another, as mentioned, is that you also need the Shortcuts app. If you don’t have it right now, get it from the App Store (opens in a new tab) free.
And of course the latest version of the Bing app for iOS (opens in a new tab).
How to quickly access Bing Chat from anywhere on your iPhone
The process is basically two-step. The first is to create a shortcut to launch the Bing app. Another is to set the shortcut to launch from the Back Tap feature.
To create a shortcut:
1. Open Shortcuts application on your iPhone.
2. Tap + button to create a new shortcut.
3. Tap Add function.
4. Search Open the App and then tap it.
5. Tap blue text which says App.
6. Select Bing from the list.
7. Tap Made.
It’s probably worth giving it an easy-to-remember name as well, especially if you have other hotkeys in the game. For example, I just called mine “Open Bing”.
The shortcut is now created, so all we need to do is tell the iPhone to execute this shortcut when you touch the back of the phone.
1. Open settings.
2. Go to Accessibility > Touch.
3. Locate and open from the bottom edge Back Tap settings.
4. Tap either Double tap or Triple Tap depending on how many touches you want to trigger the action.
5. Scroll down and find the shortcut you created above and select it.
That’s all. You now tap anywhere on your iPhone (assuming it’s unlocked), double-tap or triple-tap, depending on what you chose, and the Bing app will open up for you. From there, it’s one extra tap to launch Bing Chat.
The shortcut can also be run from the lock screen, but you need to unlock your iPhone to use the app. But it’s still pretty cool that you can do this and launch directly in Bing.
Proper shortcut support would be great
If Microsoft built proper and full support for shortcuts into the Bing app, in theory we could have a trigger that launches directly into Bing Chat instead of having to tap a button. Or launch another feature of the app, such as weather or Microsoft Rewards.
Currently, we are limited by the lack of this support, so we can only use the built-in “Open App” function to launch what we want. But with decent shortcut support, you can build more complex actions and even launch them with Siri.