Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Yarrrrrbright/Shutterstock

Your iPhone has gotten a ton of updates and improvements recently that you might not know about. Beyond the divisive Liquid Glass design and a few new Apple apps, some features and tweaks have been flying under the radar. One seemingly small change goes a long way to improve user navigation on big iPhone screens.

With iOS 18, a lot of Apple apps allowed you to navigate back to the previous screen by swiping with one finger from the left edge of the display (be it the bottom or top of the edge). This gesture made it easier to go back to the previous screen than by reaching for the back button in the top left corner. Still, both these gestures come with the same problem: with a bigger iPhone screen or using only one hand to hold your phone, it is a little inconvenient for quicker navigation.

What makes iOS’s 26 gesture update nicer is that instead of starting to swipe from the very edge of your screen, you can start the gesture from elsewhere, like the middle of the screen. So, as long as you’re not directly touching any interactive buttons or elements on the screen, you can swipe to go back to the previous screen without reaching for the back button.

The gesture is a simple left-to-right swipe motion. While not available for all apps on your iPhone, the gesture lets you peek at the previous screen when you slow down the swipe, or go back to the previous screen with a faster swipe.

You don’t even have to start in the dead middle of the screen. Starting the swipe a little off the middle and closer to the right side edge of your iPhone still triggers the navigation to the previous page. Plus, you can still swipe from the left edge to go back.

The new update has been going unnoticed by many users, but despite being a small change, it goes a long way to improve the user experience for bigger and smaller iPhones alike.

Which apps can you use this on?

I’ve been using this new gesture regularly on the Settings app, which is great for when I’m making changes to my apps or iPhone features and have to constantly navigate to the previous screen. But that’s not the only system app that supports the new swipe-to-go-back gesture.

You can use this gesture on Mail, Apple Podcasts, App Store, Music, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Shortcuts, Freeform, and more.

Safari has a notable exception

One app on your iPhone that you will notice does not fully support this new tweak to swipe-to-go-back is Safari. Apple’s web browser has retained its swipe gesture for switching tabs, requiring edge-to-screen swiping. You can swipe right from the left edge or left from the right edge of your screen to move back and forth through a tab’s history.

Credit: Apple

That being said, navigating smaller UI elements on the Safari app, like bookmarks and folders, supports the gesture. These are negligible, so the overall navigation for web pages and tabs on Safari remains a little different.

Is the update good?

The main reason I didn’t notice this iOS 26 update immediately is that I tend to use both my hands when navigating through apps, so it wasn’t until I accidentally swiped and made what I thought was an incomplete swipe-to-go-back gesture in Settings that I noticed. And since then, I’ve switched to this easier gesture for good.

This update to the swipe-to-go-back gesture is a welcome one and provides a marginally better user navigation experience than iOS 18’s gesture. I’ve always been a big user of the iPhone’s back button, given the way I handle my phone, but trying out this update regularly made me realize how much I was missing the swipe-to-go-back gesture that I get on third-party apps on my system apps.

It’s especially a big win for users with a bigger iPhone screen and users who stick to handling their screens with one hand, since edge-to-screen swiping can feel difficult for certain right-handed users. Since the update is simply an addition (of letting users swipe to the right from any point of the screen) without removing the edge-to-screen swipe, it simply allows more users to try the swipe-to-go-back gesture.

The tiny hitch

The only problem I have with this gesture update is that it feels a little inconsistent to use. When I began using the feature, I felt that I needed to put more pressure in the middle of my screen to swipe back, while swiping from the edge felt much smoother. A few days later, it felt like I was putting less pressure, but I still had to be a bit more deliberate with my holding and swiping when using some of the supported apps. Even before the update, using the swipe-to-go-back gesture was a little tricky to use on a page crowded with UI elements, but this is to be expected.

While I’m definitely seeing a smoother feel across supported apps since I began using the new gesture, it does require some time to get used to, especially if you’re someone who has gotten comfortable with the iOS 18 swipe-to-go-back gesture and wants to try out the update. But overall, the small update is still a nice tweak that can improve navigation for larger iPhone screens and for users who want to use their iPhone in one hand by a mile.