The Text on Your IPhone, iPad or Mac is too Small? It's Easy to Fix

 

If you find yourself begging to read or type words on your phone or computer screen, you won't be enjoying your Apple device very much. Not to mention headache-inducing blue light.

Apple has a number of accessibility features that you can discover and customize under Settings > Accessibility. With the launch of iOS 15, Apple's Zoom feature has a new accessibility feature. This tool is also available on Mac OS.

What is Apple's Zoom Tool?

The zoom feature lets you magnify specific parts of your screen. You can customize the feature to expand the view to full screen or a draggable window. Zoom also lets you turn on gestures like double-tapping three fingers to activate zoom, panning around your screen and changing magnification.

Where can I find Apple's Zoom tool?

To find Zoom, open the Settings app on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, tap Accessibility and select Zoom.

How the Zoom Tool Works

You can turn the magnification feature on or off to make it work best for you.

• Follow Focus lets you track your choices, such as your text insertion point, as well as your typing.

• Smart Typing becomes available if you turn on follow focus. This lets you switch to window zoom when the keyboard pops up. Window Zoom magnifies a portion of the screen into a window that you can drag to expand what you need to see, like a digital magnifying glass. Also, once the keyboard pops up, you can double-tap to expand where you're typing, but the keyboard remains intact.

• Keyboard Shortcuts only apply if you've connected an external keyboard to your iPad. If you have one, toggle the option to find and customize keyboard shortcuts like toggling zoom, moving your window, and resizing your window. If you open Zoom on your Mac, you can turn on Zoom keyboard shortcuts, scroll gestures, hover text, and the Touch Bar. For example, the toggle zoom is Option-Command-8. Pressing this combination lets you zoom in and back out. You can also choose whether you want to zoom in full-screen, split-screen or picture-in-picture mode

• The Zoom Controller gives you quick access to determine what activates for single, double and triple taps on the screen. You can also choose to show the controller on the screen. It puts a small icon on the screen which I found helpful when moving the window around the screen. When you zoom in on a part of the screen, think of it as a miniature map to keep you focused. You can choose from five different colors to make the icon more visible as well as change the opacity.

• The zoom Region lets you choose between window zoom, full screen zoom or pin zoom. Window Zoom will magnify a portion of your screen, but you'll still be able to see some of the unmagnified screen and pan over that area. Eliminates the full-screen zoom window and works like double-tapping to enlarge and pan around an image. Pinned zoom lets you select a specific part of the screen -- top, left, right or bottom -- and keeps the unpinned part at regular size.

• The zoom Filter lets you customize the color of the magnified section as inverted, grayscale, grayscale inverted or low light.

• The Maximum Zoom Level is a simple slider that lets you customize the magnification anywhere from 1.2x to 15x.