We spent years Seeing devices without buttons in dreams. I admit my guilt. Touchscreens everywhere, clean, minimalist interfaces. It seemed like the future. But something changed.

A year ago, the iPhone 15 Pro launched an action button. It can be customized to replace the silent switch. Two years ago, Apple Watch Ultra began to use this button on their watches. Convenient and useful, I know from my own experience.

There is now a camera control button on the iPhone 16. Not long ago, we predicted the future of an iPhone with no buttons at all. It seemed inevitable and desirable.. It was even filtered. But within two years, the iPhone got two buttons.

Outside of the Apple ecosystem, mechanical keyboards are trendier than ever. We’ve been hearing for years that the laptop of the future won’t have a physical keyboard, and a similar model has already arrived. But the repairman is moving on.

A product like the Stream Deck is also gaining a following. Players And pennants. It even helps with productivity. And that’s just a panel with configurable buttons.

A Stream Deck for someone who doesn’t play video games or live stream on Twitch, he’s just a boring office worker. Image: Xataka.

Not to mention cars. For years, a screen-only dashboard or a touch-sensitive replacement for physical buttons was assumed to be an inevitable future, and many brands have already backed down.

European regulators will also punish this practice. Even someone coming from such a minimalist company predicted years ago that physical buttons would return to cars.

A clear example of buttons with a search function and integrated display in a car. A perfect blend of two worlds: physical control, dynamic information. Image: Skoda.

What’s going on? The buttons are great after all. They provide instant control and we don’t even have to look at them to use them. They are reliable and give excellent physical feedback.

Touch interfaces are elegant and attractive, but they can also be frustrating at the same time. There are buttons that manage to combine the best of both worlds and are much better than a button or even an icon on a touchscreen.

The return of buttons is not a step backward, sophistication resulting from learning from actual experienceIt is the balance between aesthetics and functionality.

Technology should adapt to us, not the other way around, and while the crystal ball may try—and successfully—to convince us otherwise, at the end of the day we prefer buttons in our hands. Long live buttons.

Featured image | Apple

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