Saving your iPad's home button with Multitasking gestures

Today, I attended an iPad training day run by Joe Moretti, which focused on using iPads in education. We explored a bunch of interesting and useful Apps, which I am sure will be the subject of few future posts. One useful thing I learnt, however, was just about the iPad itself.

I often have multiple apps open at once and copy/paste stuff between them or otherwise want to switch from one to another at reasonable frequency. Most people know that you can use double-press the Home button to reveal a bar of recently-used apps that you can swipe through. What you may not know (and I didn’t) is that you can use a single four-finger gesture to reveal this, saving time as well as wear and tear on your Home button. Likewise, a single gesture will return to the Home screen. You can even switch apps directly and bypass the Home screen or multitasking bar altogether. The gestures are in the iPad user guide:

You can use multitasking gestures on iPad to return to the Home screen, reveal the multitasking bar, or switch to another app.

Return to the Home screen: Pinch four or five fingers together.

Reveal the multitasking bar: Swipe up with four or five fingers.

Switch apps: Swipe left or right with four or five fingers.

Turn multitasking gestures on or off: Go to Settings > General > Multitasking Gestures.

It makes me wonder what other useful gems I have missed!