Imagine this scenario:

You are writing an email to a work colleague and listening to a podcast on your iPhone when your home phone rings.

You want to pause the podcast quickly. If you’re using headphones with a pause button then no problem, you simply hit the ‘pause’ button or even pull the jack out, causing to automatically stop.

Handily, there’s another quick way to pause the track. Just double-click the Home button, and a window pops up with iPod controls, allowing you to pause/play, as well as skip tracks and adjust the iPod volume:

You can also tap the iPod button in the window to go straight to the iPod.

By default, this trick only works if an iPod track is playing. However, you can change the behaviour of the Home button double-click action by going to Settings > General> Home Button:

Choosing Home means that double-clicking has the same effect as single-clicking: it merely takes you to your Home screen.

Phone Favorites – the default setting – brings up your favourite contacts for quick dialing, however, if you choose iPod then double-clicking takes you straight to the iPod app, regardless of whether a track is playing.

You can also use the iPod Controls setting to turn off the feature that displays iPod controls when a track is playing.