(Tip) AssistiveTouch Virtual Home Button
A great feature of iOS for quite awhile has been AssistiveTouch which floats a virtual button on-screen which can mimic all hardware buttons on the device, including the well used hardware Home button:
Settings>General>Accessibility>AssistiveTouch: turn ON
Tapping the on-screen button will display a menu with several items which can be chosen from. One of the these is the virtual Home button which when used, will help to minimize wear & tear on the actual hardware Home button.
However, there is a way to truly mimic the Home button without the extra features provided in the AssistiveTouch menu panel. This will allow you to use the floating AssistiveTouch button all on it's own, just like the hardware Home button without bringing up the extra items.
To get the on-screen AssistiveTouch button to act like a true Home button:
Settings/General/Accessibility/AssitiveTouch/Customize Top Level Menu
1. Delete (using the "-" button at the bottom-right of the screen) all icons except for one icon (you cannot delete all icons, one will always remain)
2. Change the one icon remaining to "Home" by tapping on the remaining icon, then select "Home" from the list of available assignments
3. Tap Done
That's it...you can now directly use the floating AssistiveTouch button like the hardware Home button.
To restore the icons & their order to default:
Settings/General/Accessibility/AssistiveTouch/Customize Top Level Menu
Scroll down to the bottom and tap "Reset"
Note: To re-add the Siri icon (Voice Control only be available to add if Siri is disabled), Enable Siri under
Settings/General/Siri
Then enable Siri
Force Restart the device
The Siri icon can now be re-added
To re-add the Voice Control button, disable Siri
iPad mini 4, Wi-Fi-OTHER, iOS 9.3.5, 16GB