The volume buttons on the side of your iPhone are for more than just adjusting volume levels for media, ringers, alerts, Siri, and other sounds and voices. You can use them to perform different actions inside certain apps, and you can even create custom actions using the Shortcuts app. It's not exactly button mapping, but it's as close as you'll get without jailbreaking iOS 15.

While some third-party apps can utilize your iPhone's volume buttons for tasks besides volume adjustments, it's limited to just the normal expected behavior of iOS. As you'll see below, there are a few actions the volume buttons can perform besides raising and lowering volume levels, and apps submitted to the App Store must not go beyond those parameters.

2.5.9 Apps that alter or disable the functions of standard switches, such as the Volume Up/Down and Ring/Silent switches, or other native user interface elements or behaviors will be rejected.

When using Photo, Portrait, Square, or Pano mode in the Camera app, you can use the volume up or down button on your iPhone as a shutter button. Pressing once will take a picture in Photo, Portrait, and Square modes for the front or rear camera. For Pano mode, pressing once will start a panorama, and a second time will stop it, or you could long-press a volume button to start one and let go to stop.

The concept is the same when taking pictures in other Apple apps, such as Contacts, Magnifier, Mail, Notes, and Reminders.

In many third-party camera apps, you can also use the volume up or down button as a shutter-release button. For example, Adobe Lightroom, Camera+, FiLMiC Firstlight, Focos, Halide Mark II, Pro Camera by Moment, ProCam 8, and Snapseed. You can even use it to take pics with Snapchat and the Instagram Stories camera.

Like with pictures, you can use the volume up or volume down button in the Camera app to start a video using the front or rear camera. Choose a shooting mode such as Video, Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, or Cinematic, then press the volume up or down button to start recording and again to stop. You can also press and hold a volume button to start recording and let go to stop.

It also works in third-party video recording apps, including FiLMiC Pro and ProMovie Recorder. You may need to enable the feature in the app's settings.

On iPhone XS and newer models, you can press and hold either volume button in the Photo shooting mode to start recording a QuickTake video. Then, just let go to stop recording. QuickTakes are convenient because you can take them quickly when shooting photos without fumbling around with the mode selector.

If you have an iPhone X or older, pressing and holding either volume button won't start a QuickTake recording since these iPhone models don't support the feature. Instead, you can press and hold a volume button in the Photo or Square shooting mode to take a burst of images, then let go to stop.

On an iPhone XS or newer model, long-pressing one of the volume buttons will start taking a QuickTake, but you can bring back the burst option to one of the buttons. Go to Settings –> Camera, then toggle on the "Use Volume Up for Burst" switch. From now on, the long-press volume up gesture will take bursts, while the long-press volume down gesture sticks to QuickTake videos.

In apps like Files, Mail, Notes, and Reminders, you can scan a document using your iPhone's built-in document scanner. It's basically the Camera app modified to focus on documents, so if you suspect that you can use a volume button on your iPhone to snap a picture of a document, you'd be right.

The document scanner will often automatically scan and snap an image, but if it doesn't, instead of hitting the shutter button on the screen, you can use the volume up or volume down button to take the scan. After that, you'll need to drag the corners to adjust the crop before saving the image.

By default, you can snooze an alarm from the Clock app on your iPhone by pressing either volume button. It's as simple as that. If you can't get it to snooze the alarm, you may have "Snooze" disabled for that particular alarm, so double-check its settings.

If you don't like snoozing alarms, you can toggle off the "Snooze" switch for each alarm in the Clock app. Without a snooze option, pressing either volume button after an alarm sounds will turn the alarm off.

The volume buttons are also quite handy for incoming calls from Phone, FaceTime, and other calling apps. When a call comes in, you can press either volume button to silence the call. If your iPhone's ringer is enabled, it will silence it. If you have your iPhone on vibrate only, it will stop the vibrations. You can then answer if you'd like, hit the Side or Home button to reject the call, or wait for the call to go to voicemail.

If you ever lose your iPhone and need to use Find My on another device to play a sound to locate it, pressing either volume button on your iPhone when you find it will turn the loud sound off.

Unfortunately, there is no automation trigger involving hardware buttons on the iPhone, so you can't set up an automation to detect when you press a volume button to initiate a task. However, you can use them as an interactive component to custom shortcuts and automations.

For example, I've created a shortcut called Perform Actions with Volume Buttons, and you can incorporate into another shortcut or run it from within an automation that's triggered by something else.

It gets your iPhone's current volume, converts it to a number, and then shows a notification that explains what pressing the volume buttons will do. In this case, pressing volume up executes Action A, pressing volume down executes Action B, and doing nothing stops the shortcut.

Then, it waits five seconds to give you enough time to read the notification and press a volume button. After five seconds, it retrieves the current volume again and compares that to the number that the shortcut previously recorded. Action A runs if the present volume level is greater than that number. If it's less, Action B runs. If you don't press anything, it stops the shortcut.

If you don't want the volume buttons to affect anything on your iPhone when you're using a specific app, like when you don't want to accidentally lower or raise the volume, you can take advantage of Guided Access. The accessibility feature restricts whoever's using your iPhone to the current app so that they can't mess around with anything else on the device.

Go to Settings –> Accessibility –> Guided Access, then toggle "Guided Access" on.

Then, go to the app you want and triple-click the Side or Home button on your iPhone. If you have more than one action assigned to the triple-click gesture, choose "Guided Access" from the action menu.

On the Guided Access screen, choose "Options," make sure the "Volume Buttons" switch is off, and hit "Done." Next, hit "Start," then set and verify a passcode.

After verifying the passcode, Guided Access will start, and the volume buttons won't do anything while you're in the app. To end Guided Access, triple-click your Side or Home button. If you have more than one action assigned to the triple-click gesture, choose "Guided Access" from the action menu. Then, enter your passcode, and hit "End" when you return to the Guided Access screen.

The above tips are for the volume buttons by themselves. However, they are used for other tasks when combined with other hardware buttons. Here's a quick list of everything they can help accomplish:

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