Using the Magnifier On Your iPhone

The magnifier on your iPhone is a hidden app that you can use to read small text on medicine, food items, menus and more. You can also temporarily save images so you don't need to keep the iPhone pointed at the item.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using the Magnifier on your iPhone. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So the Magnifier is a really useful function of your iPhone that turns your iPhone and its camera into basically a magnifying glass. You can use this to read text when it's too small like on the back of pill bottles or instructions for cooking something. Or if you have forgotten your reading glasses and you need to read something, like a menu, you can use the magnifier for that as well. It's also handy because you can take a temporary picture of something to refer to it later. So, for instance, you can have your iPhone reach around to the back of some electronics, take a picture or what's there and then refer to it on your iPhone without saving it permanently in the Photos Library.
So, first let's configure how to get to the Magnifier. This is part of the Accessibility features of your iPhone. So you are going to go into Settings. Then you're going to go down to Accessibility. What you want to do is go to the Accessibility Shortcut. This will list all the different things you could easily access on your iPhone. In this case with this model by pressing the side button 3 times. Now I've got several things turned on here. One of them is Magnifier. If you set Magnifier to be the only one then triple clicking the side button will just go to the Magnifier. Otherwise it's going to show us options. So if I try that now it's going to come up with a list of different options, all those that were there. Magnifier will be one of those. 
I'm going to turn it on with the iPhone pointed at a diagram that is kind of hard to read. It's got small print. The camera will then show this diagram and I could see it a little bit easier using the slider here. I could slide in to magnify. So you can get pretty close. Of course I can move the iPhone itself closer. At some point it will be kind of out of focus. 
Now you have more options than just actually having a magnifier. You've also got controls down here. So I can tap here, for instance, and I can adjust the brightness. I can tap here and adjust the contrast. I can tap here and then use a variety of different filters. So, for instance, I can filter it with one of those. This may make things easier to read for some. You also can turn the Flashlight on. So if there's a dark spot you can turn on the flashlight to shine more light and then you can see that here. 
Now one of the best things you can do is you can take a picture of something. So, for instance, if I didn't want to have to look at this right now I could just tap here once. It will actually take a picture. Now I can move my iPhone around. I don't have to pointed at that thing anymore. I can zoom in like that. I can even try the filters, brightness, contrast, and all of that. The picture is saved there. Tap here and it goes back into regular camera mode. 
I can also take a collection of shots. So, for instance, I could go here and if I want to save this one but also several others I can tap here. You could see it changes to the word View and a number there. So I can take a shot here but then I could also go somewhere else and perhaps take a shot here. You can see it says View 2. If I go into this I could see both of those shots right there. I can switch between them. I could go back to here to add more. I could also, when I'm in there, go to End and end it. Then those shots will be gone. Also when you take a shot not only can you view it but you also have the Share button there. It was there when we had the multiple shots as well. So if you do decide you want to save it, to say Notes or send it in Messages or Mail or Save it as a file, you can do that even if you are in the Magnifier App. 
Now you do have some options here. If you tap down here you see the four different adjustments that you could make including turning on the flashlight. You could add more here at the bottom and remove these. So if you want to remove one, like say you're never going to use filters, you can remove it and it just goes down here. You can always add it in again. You can rearrange the order that these are in. You can also add more. What you see down here might depend on the iPhone model you have. On this iPhone I have Focus Block, which is handy to be able to block the focus when you're viewing in the Magnifier and use that Focus somewhere else. You also can switch cameras so you can go to the front camera and the back camera. You might even find some variety inside these. For instance, if I add Cameras here and Done I'll see the cameras there. I can tap and it will switch to the front camera and the back camera. 
But I actually have three options on my iPhone 13 Pro. One of them being the Macro Camera. An option I have on my iPhone 13 Pro, that's not here, is the ability to use People Detection which is an Accessibility feature that allows you to see how close people are to you for those that are visually impaired. So that's not available here on this older iPhone. You could also determine which filters are available. So you can remove some that you just will never use and just leave the ones that you like.
There are other ways to access the Magnifier. One is, in Accessibility under Touch, you can add this as the back tap. So I can do a double tap on the back and it will actually trigger the Magnifier. Or you can set that to triple tap if you want. 
So as you can imagine there's a lot of uses for an app where you quickly take a picture and just have it there temporarily or just enlarge text to make it easier to read just at that moment. Give it a try. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Using the Magnifier On Your iPhone”

Clay Sisk

2 years ago

You can also access the magnifier via the Control Center.
The share menu allows the photo to be saved to the Photos App.

Karen Brown

1 year ago

Personally, I find the easiest way to access the magnifier is through the Control Center.

Michelle

This is really neat. I was able to folllow your directions and now have the magnifier operating. So much iPhones can do thanks for sharing.

Braden

I absolutely love the magnifier. I use it all the time. It's great when trying to look at the back of a piece of tech that's against a wall, for instance, a tv I can reach my hand behind to plug something in or out, but can't see what I'm feeling, this is super handy for that. Or taking a quick picture of something that I don't want to be saved to my photos and the cloud. I have memory issues, so taking a temporary picture of a model number while I walk to my computer to search for it, golden.

Carol

I wish I had known about this when I was trying to put my phone in my mouth to photograph my broken tooth for my dentist when he asked for a picture. I will remember for next time.

Patricia penton

11 months ago

Why do they use small printer like on scripstions of course the elderly can’t read them never mind me?

Comments Closed.

Using the Magnifier On Your iPhone

Comments: 6 Responses to “Using the Magnifier On Your iPhone”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information