In this podcast, Thomas Domville explains how to stop the two-finger Magic Tap gesture from unexpectedly starting or pausing media playback. If you hang up a call or use Magic Tap in other contexts and your audiobook or music begins playing when you didn’t intend it to, this setting lets you turn that behavior off (and back on later if needed).
What You’ll Learn
- What the Magic Tap gesture does by default.
- Why media sometimes starts playing after ending a call.
- Where Apple tucked away the control to disable Magic Tap’s media action.
- How to toggle the option quickly and safely.
Key Points & Highlights
- Problem addressed: Unwanted media playback triggered by Magic Tap (e.g., when ending calls).
- Solution: Disable Magic Tap’s Media Playback action in VoiceOver Commands.
- Reversible: You can re-enable the option anytime if you miss the convenience.
- Scope: Applies when no other action is available—preventing the “surprise” play/pause behavior.
Step-by-Step Guide: Turn Off Magic Tap Media Playback
- Open Settings.
- Go to Accessibility → VoiceOver.
- Enter Commands.
- Choose Magic Tap.
- Toggle Media Playback Off.
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Thomas: Hello and welcome. My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. If MagicTab has been kind of a pest for you, sometimes things can get frustrating for those that use a MagicTab. For example, if you're on a phone, you're calling somebody, sometimes you do a MagicTab to hang up on a phone call, right? Only to find out or to end up having the media being playing or the last audiobook's been playing, whatever this might be in the background, things like that. If that's been occurring quite a bit for you and it's something that frustrates you and wish you could be able to turn that option off, you can. So starting in iOS 26, you're now able to disable the magic tab when it comes to media playing. So this is not going to be for everyone, but I want to at least make this aware for everybody. So if this is one of those things that annoys you and you would like to have that option turned off because it occurs to you each and every time you don't want it to happen, have no fear. I'm going to show you how to turn that magic tap off. We're going to head over to the native settings.
VoiceOver: Settings. Double tap to open.
Thomas: One finger double tap to open settings.
VoiceOver: Settings.
Thomas: Now swipe to the right until you find the Accessibility button.
VoiceOver: Accessibility button.
Thomas: One finger double tap that.
VoiceOver: Personalize iPhone in ways that work best for you with accessibility features for vision, mobility, hearing, speech, and cognition. Learn more. Heading.
Thomas: Swipe to the right until you find the VoiceOver button.
VoiceOver: Personalize vision. Heading. VoiceOver. On. Button.
Thomas: Double tap that with one finger.
VoiceOver: VoiceOver. Switch button. On.
Thomas: Now swipe to the right until you find commands.
VoiceOver: Commands. Button.
Thomas: One-figure double-tap. Open that.
VoiceOver: All commands. Button.
Thomas: We're almost there. Now swipe to the right until you find magic tap.
VoiceOver: Magic tap. Button.
Thomas: One-figure double-tap.
VoiceOver: Media playback. Switch button on. Double-tap to toggle setting.
Thomas: Here we are at last. Now, by default, it is set on. So if you like to toggle that so the media does not end up playing, there is a little hint here. So if I go to the right.
VoiceOver: If enabled, magic tap will pause or play media when no other action is available.
Thomas: A nice little explanation in a nutshell there. So that is how you disable the magic tap for media playing. So go back left, toggle that to off.
VoiceOver: Media playback. Switch button on. Double tap to toggle setting.
Thomas: Voila. Now you have that set and done. Now, of course, it's easy to reverse that if that's something that gets to the point where you're not able to do certain things. You can come back in there and turn that back on. But hopefully the point is, is if you turn that off now when you go hang up a phone or wherever you might be, you do a magic tap and it starts playing the media. That is one example. That can occur, I guess, during the hanging up of a phone call. But there's a lot of places, too, when you do a double tap and it just seems like, oh, I did not mean to do that. I don't want the media to be playing and whatever not. So there you go. That's how you disable the magic tap for media playing. My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. Until next time.