Can you use AssistiveTouch to start a dual camera recording on iPhone?

What AssistiveTouch actually is

AssistiveTouch lives in Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch, and turning it on adds a small floating button that sits on top of every screen, draggable to any edge. Tapping it opens a menu of customizable icons, and Apple also lets you skip the menu entirely by assigning the top-level gestures — Single-Tap, Double-Tap and Long Press on the floating button itself — directly to an action, including opening a specific app or running a Shortcut.

That last option is the same door every other alternate trigger comes in through. A Shortcut set to Open App > DualCam is available to AssistiveTouch exactly the way it is available to Back Tap or the Action Button, because none of them are talking to DualCam directly — they are all handing the same request to iOS, which then opens the app like any ordinary launch.

Opening DualCam is real; starting the recording is not

Setting Single-Tap or Double-Tap to Shortcut > Open App > DualCam works exactly like tapping the home screen icon, just reachable from a floating button that follows you across apps and the Lock Screen. That is a genuine shortcut, and unlike a physical gesture it does not care whether your hand is free to reach the case or whether a case is muffling an accelerometer underneath it.

What stays out of reach is a tap that both opens the app and starts the file rolling in one motion. DualCam does not publish a Shortcuts action for starting a recording, so there is nothing for AssistiveTouch, Back Tap, the Action Button or an automation you build yourself to call beyond opening the app. That gap sits on the app’s side, not in which trigger you pick, so no accessibility feature closes it on its own.

Why this one does not depend on a physical tap

Back Tap listens through the phone’s accelerometer, which means a case, a mount, or simply a hand that cannot deliver a sharp, deliberate double-tap can make it unreliable — it either misses real taps or fires on knocks that were not meant for it. The Action Button and volume buttons need a finger to physically reach and press something on the frame. AssistiveTouch needs none of that: the floating button is already on the glass, and a tap there is the same touch gesture the rest of the screen already responds to.

That makes it the trigger worth setting up specifically for a phone that is mounted on a tripod or gimbal and awkward to reach around the back of, sitting in a case bulky enough to dull an accelerometer knock, or being used by someone for whom a precise tap on a narrow physical button is harder than a tap on a large, draggable on-screen target.

The gap that is left is setup time, not the trigger

A multi-camera session has to configure both camera inputs against one shared hardware budget before either produces a usable frame, and that negotiation happens before the session starts, not while it is already running — covered in more detail in the guide on why dual recording takes a moment to start. Whatever opens DualCam still has to wait on that same setup underneath.

A faster trigger, AssistiveTouch included, only removes the steps that come before the app opens — unlocking the phone, finding the icon. It does not remove the configuration work that happens once the app is already open, because that work depends on the camera hardware, not on how you got there.

Setting it up without losing the rest of AssistiveTouch

• In Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch, tap Single-Tap or Double-Tap under Custom Actions, then choose Shortcut > Open App > DualCam.
• If you already rely on the floating button’s menu for other things — Siri, Control Center, a custom gesture — leave Long Press or the menu itself alone and assign only one of the top-level taps to DualCam, the same way Back Tap keeps its two taps independent.
• Set the countdown timer before a take you know is coming — off, 3, 5 or 10 seconds. It has to be chosen before recording starts, but once it is, it absorbs the remaining setup pause instead of you standing there watching the preview load.
• For several short takes back to back, stay on the camera screen between them rather than backing out and reopening through AssistiveTouch each time — leaving the app open keeps both cameras already configured.