The Magnifier is a visual accessibility feature that turns your iPad or iPhone into a magnifying glass. That makes seeing everything from newspapers to menus to instructions easier for anyone with low vision.
Note: The quality of the Magnifier, including how closely it can focus on text and objects, will vary depending on the quality of the camera in your iPhone or iPad.
How to enable the Magnifier as a shortcut
The Magnifier is available as a standalone app or as an Accessibility shortcut on the best iPhones and best iPads. If you happen to delete the app and want it back, you can download it from the App Store. By default, Magnifier is not enabled as a shortcut.
To enable it as a shortcut:
- Launch Settings from your Home screen.
- Tap Accessibility.
- Scroll down and select Accessibility Shortcut.
- Tap Magnifier.
Once enabled, just triple-press the Side button or Home button (if your iPhone has one) to start it up. You may have to choose Magnifier if you have multiple accessibility options enabled.
The following steps work when opening the Magnifier either as a shortcut or through the official app. The steps are the same regardless of your selection.
How to zoom in with the Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap, hold, and drag the slider to adjust magnification — left to decrease and right to increase magnification.
How to turn on the flashlight in the Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Underneath the zoom slider, tap the Flashlight button. It looks like a flashlight.
How to take a freeze-frame in the Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap the Freeze Frame button at the bottom center of the screen. It is a large circle with a smaller circle inside it and looks similar to the camera shutter button.
- You can drag the zoom slider to adjust magnification on this freeze frame, or use any other Magnifier tools.
- Tap the Freeze Frame button again (now with an "X") to return to the live Magnifier.
How to manually adjust the brightness and contrast in Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap the brightness (it looks like a sun) or contrast (a circle with two halves) buttons.
- Tap, hold, and drag the sliders to adjust brightness and contrast to your needs.
How to change the filter in Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap the Filter button. It looks like three overlapping circles.
- Select the filter that you want to use:
- None
- Grayscale
- Red on Black
- Yellow on Black
- Yellow on Blue
- White on Blue
- Inverted
- Inverted Grayscale
- Black on Red
- Black on Yellow
- Blue on Yellow
- Blue on White
How to enable Multi-Photo Mode in Magnifier
A new feature in Magnifier is the ability to take multiple freeze frames in Magnifier and view them instead of just a single one. Any freeze frames taken in this mode are not saved to your Camera Roll, and you can go back to Single Photo Mode at any time.
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap the Multi-Photo Mode button in the bottom right.
- Add as many freeze frames as you need following the steps above.
- Tap View to view your freeze frames and make adjustments as you see fit.
- Tap the plus (+) button to return to Multi-Photo Mode.
- Tap End in the top left to go back to Single Photo Mode.
How to customize controls in Magnifier
- Launch the Magnifier app on your iPhone or iPad. You can also triple press the Side or Home buttons to get to the Magnifier.
- Tap the Settings button in the bottom left. It looks like a gear icon.
- Tap the red minus button to remove secondary controls or the green plus button to add them.
- Touch and drag the handles on the right to rearrange the order that the controls appear in.
- Tap Filters to choose which filters and inverted filters you want to use regularly.
- Tap Done to save your changes.
A great tool
Magnifier is just of the many Accessibility tools available on iPhones and iPad. Use it to bring physical objects much closer, just as you would an actual magnifying device.
May 2022: Updated for latest versions of iOS and iPadOS.
