Stop squinting at your phone
HOW TO...Stop squinting at your phone
By Nik Rawlinson
What you need: Smartphone, tablet or ebook reader
Time required: 30 minutes
It happens to most of us sooner or later: as we age, our eyes become less flexible and our eyesight deteriorates. But rather than squinting at phone and tablet screens, you should use their operating system’s tools for enhancing the display and making text easier to read. Here, we’ll outline your options on iPhones and iPads (Steps 1 to 5) and Android devices (Steps 6 to 7), as well as those on Kindle and Kobo ebook readers (see box on page 37).
1 Tweak ‘Dynamic Type’ settings on your iPhone and iPad
Although apps typically set their own text sizes, many follow the iOS and iPadOS Dynamic Type feature. This lets you set a general text size for your phone, and apps that support it adjust their text to match it.
This is not a fixed number like a font size in Word – it simply tells your phone whether you want text to appear larger or smaller.
You can find and adjust your dynamic type by opening Settings and tapping ‘Display & Brightness’, followed by Text Size. Here, drag the slider to the right to make text larger, and to the left to make it smaller.
There are no numbers at either end of the scale, or on any of the interim markers. However, the text at the top of the screen will change size as you move the slider. This lets you decide the point at which the text is comfortable for you to read.
2 Make text fatter and boost brightness
If characters are too narrow to read clearly, thicken them on your iPhone or iPad by tapping the slider next to Bold Text ( 1 in our screenshot) on the ‘Display & Brightness’ settings screen.