Force Touch

Force Touch

Force Touch debuted on Apple Watch
Levels of input	Force Touch - 2 (Macbooks) - 3 (Continuous input for OS animations, and some inputs [drawing]) 3D Touch - 3 (continuous input for the OS animations) Haptic Touch - 1 (triggered by a long press)
Design firm	Apple Inc.
Introduced	September 9, 2014; 9 years ago (2014-09-09)

Force Touch is a haptic pressure-sensing technology developed by Apple Inc. that enables trackpads and touchscreens to sense the amount of force being applied to their surfaces. Software that uses Force Touch can distinguish between various levels of force for user interaction purposes.^[1][2] Force Touch was first unveiled on September 9, 2014, during the introduction of Apple Watch. Starting with the Apple Watch, Force Touch has been incorporated into many Apple products, including MacBooks and the Magic Trackpad 2.

iPhones have a similar technology known as 3D Touch. The technology brings usability enhancements to the software by offering a third dimension to accept input. Users can apply a force on the input surface to interact with the displayed content in a way that a normal touch would not. 3D touch enables software features such as pressing hard to access a shortcut menu for an app, and pressing hard on a website link to show a preview of the web page.

3D Touch has three settings for input sensitivity. This enables users to customize a preference of light, medium, or firm press on the iPhone's screen.^[3] 3D touch gives a continuous pressure reading to software that is running on the phone. Force Touch on the other hand, gives only two layers of interaction: A normal click and a force click. Apple's haptic engine called the Taptic Engine resides in these devices, which houses a linear actuator producing vibratory effects as feedback. Apple enabled application developers to leverage the pressure sensitivity of trackpads and touchscreens into their own apps. 3D Touch was discontinued with the iPhone 11 and onwards.^[4]

Haptic Touch is a software feature on the iPhone XR (but not the iPhone XS) and later iPhone models that serves to replace the functionality that 3D touch had. The touchscreen no longer has a pressure sensitive layer, so the software waits for a long-press to activate certain features, instead of a force press. (only ones for elements that do not have an action assigned to long press). This feature was added to the iPhone SE (1st generation) with the iOS 13 update and to any iPad capable of running iPadOS 13.

As of watchOS 7, Force Touch is discontinued on all subsequent Apple Watches, and only Haptic Touch is recognized.^[5]