Apple’s latest operating system update for its mobile devices, iOS 16, introduces a range of new features like fancier lock screens and message editing. In bringing in new things, though, it has inadvertently broken some others, and one of the victims this week has been a whole bunch of rhythm games.
In iOS 16 tapping three fingers at once on the screen brings up a copy & paste menu, while swiping with three fingers is how you undo and redo text input. That’s very handy if you’re using your iPhone to type, but it’s not ideal when you’re in the middle of trying to match your fingers to some hectic beats.
As those tweets and statements say, players of games like Arcaea have found that any time they go to use three fingers at once—which is pretty common on harder tracks—it’s triggering various system functions and interrupting their gameplay.
Here’s some gameplay footage of one of Arcaea’s tougher tracks, showing just how often players would be tapping (or even swiping) with three fingers at once:
While you’d think this would be a quick fix for Apple, the issue had been raised while iOS 16 was still in beta, yet still made it into the first public release. It’s also not the first time this has happened, either. As 9to5mac reports, back in 2019 the launch of iOS 13 had similar problems, when three-finger taps and gestures started messing with games like Fortnite and PUBG.
That time the problem was solved by Apple telling iOS not to bother with the gestures when they clearly weren’t going to be needed. Like, say, when the user was playing a game. It’s a bummer that was somehow left out of this latest update, but hopefully now that it’s been raised publicly a fix won’t be too far away.
In the meantime, regular players of games like this are being urged to avoid updating to iOS 16.