Navigate App History Stack

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Learn how to go back through an app’s history stack on the iPhone.

When you are buried deep in an app, and you want to go back to the app’s main screen, in a lot of cases you just need to keep tapping on the button in the upper left-hand corner. Each tap brings you back to the previous screen. A good example for this is the Settings app or Files app. Apple introduced a new was to go back through this ‘stack’ with iOS 14, you can now just long-press or tap and hold on the button in the upper left corner to bring up a menu. This menu shows you the history or stack of the app. Just select which screen you want to go to from there! See how to navigate an app’s history stack in this video for the iPhone.

Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):

In this video, we’re going to look at a new feature in iOS 14 that isn’t much talked about. We can now navigate our history while we’re in an app. Let’s see what I mean. Let’s go to my iPhone.

Let’s go and open up my Settings app. I have it on my second screen, so I swipe over to the left, and then I have Settings here. Now, when you go into an app, such as a Settings app, and dig further into the screens, let’s go and take a look at my Notifications here, and now we’re going to go to Books, and now let’s go to Banner Style. I’m buried deep into this app. What I would like to do is I would like to go back maybe three or four menus or three or four screens.

In the past, what I would have to do is tap on Books here, and then I tap on Notifications, and then I tap on Settings. So I have to keep tapping to go back in the app, in my case, the Settings app here.

Well, now I can tap and hold to go back or navigate back through an app. So let’s go back over to my Notifications, and now we’re going to go to Books, and we’re going to go to Banner Style. I want to go back. Well, instead of tapping on this numerous times, all I need to do is just tap and hold on it, and you’re going to see I can go back in history here. I want to go back to the settings. I just swipe down; we can see I’m looking at my settings or highlighted here. I let go, and we’re back at my settings.

This does work across multiple apps. I’m going to swipe up and now let’s go over to my Files app. So I swipe over to the left, and we’re looking at my Files app. Tap on it to open it up. And now, let’s go over to iCloud Drive. Let’s open up my Desktop folder, and now let’s open up Untitled. I want to go back. Well, instead of tapping on Desktop, Untitled, and further back, all I have to do now is just tap and hold. And now I can go back to iCloud Drive or just go back to my Browse screen. So I’m going to go back to my Browse screen. I swipe down; we can see that browse is highlighted, I let go, and now I’m back browsing.

So that’s how we can easily navigate through the history of an app. This was introduced with iOS 14. Once we go further into an app settings, all we have to do is go to the upper left-hand corner. You tap and hold, and then you’re going to be able to select how far back you want to go in history for that app.

So that’s how we can easily navigate through an app’s history on the iPhone.

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