The new Action Button on iPhone 15 replaces the hard mute switch which has existed since the original iPhone as a way to mute calls. It comes set by default to behave like the old mute switch, but it’s easy to re-program it to do almost anything.

But when I went to use the Shortcuts app to make the button open Bing to complete a voice search, I struggled at first with how to make it do something within the Bing app. For that reason, I thought I’d share the specific steps so that you can ask Copilot’s awesome GPT-based AI to answer complex questions by just holding down the button and then asking the question out loud.

Make the Action Button trigger Copilot

1. Open Shortcuts
   • (Tap search just above the Dock and type “shortcuts”)
2. Tap the plus sign at the top right
3. Tap “Add Action”
4. Search for “Bing” at the top
   • This lists all the pre-built things that the Bing app exposes to Shortcuts
5. Tap “new Bing”
6. Tap “Done”
7. Open Settings
8. Tap “Action Button” which is below Control Center
9. Swipe to the left or right until “Shortcut” appears in the text below the image of the Action Button
10. Tap the slightly larger text underneath “Open an app or run your favorite shortcut”.
11. Tap “new Bing” which should appear under “My Shortcuts”
12. Press and hold the Action button and Bing should open and start listening for your question.

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like versions of this for other apps or features.

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