People are Annoyed You Can’t Slide to Unlock with iOS 10

With the release of iOS 10, Apple has changed a fundamental aspect of the iPhone: the “Slide to Unlock” gesture used to bypass the lock screen is gone, and in its place is a mechanism that requires double-tapping the home button. While this seems like a small change — How hard is it to double-tap a button, nerds? — in practice, it’s confusing the hell out of people who are used to the old method after doing it for years.

We’ve known this change was coming ever since the more foolhardy among us installed the beta version of iOS 10 this summer. It’s one of the most frustrating aspects of the update. I’m still struggling with it several months later.

And it turns out I’m not the only one:

Kreps is much calmer about the change than other social media users. Some have complained on Twitter that the new unlocking mechanism isn’t very intuitive:

The assumption is that Apple changed the unlock mechanism to make it easier for people who use Touch ID, its biometric security tool, to unlock their devices. The problem is that Touch ID can be finicky — or just plain absent — on older iPhones. Apple is also changing something people did countless times a day; it’s hard to unlearn years of training simply because the company updated iOS.

Some users report that “Slide to Unlock” hasn’t been nixed from devices like the iPhone 5c as they don’t come with the fingerprint-recognizing technology.

This update to iOS has neat features that will make life easier for iPhone owners. But this particular change seems ill-planned. We’ve unlocked our iPhones by sliding our fingers across their displays since 2007. Not even presenting the option to revert back to the old behavior just feels like Apple trying to teach old dogs new tricks. But you know, “courage.”