How to unlock cool things that you never knew your iPhone could do!

The Accessibility section in your iPhone’s Settings app is a veritable treasure trove of cool features and functions for your device, but unless you had a specific need to browse and enable certain settings - such as a visual, hearing or physical impairment - then you may not have realised what is there. You’ll find numerous ways to make your iPhone easier to use, customise the appearance and access key features and functions much quicker. In this feature, we dissect the very best tricks and features from within the Accessibility settings and show you how they can be used to make your iPhone more efficient and better suited to your needs, as well as adding cool new cosmetic features to make your device stand out from the crowd.

To access these features and more, go to Settings>Accessibility. We are using iOS 14 here, so some ways to access these options may differ from earlier versions.

If you want your iPhone to read out notifications, go to Accessibility> VoiceOver, turn on VoiceOver and then enable ‘Always Speak Notifications’.

Read small text easier

Unless you are reading a book, email or webpage then you can’t pinch and expand your fingers to zoom in on small text on your iPhone screen - but thankfully, the Zoom options found in your Accessibility Settings help you get around this.

01 Zoom Filter

The Zoom Filter determines how the zoomed portion of the screen is presented. You can have this set to Inverted, Greyscale, Greyscale Inverted, Low Light or select ‘None’ to have no filter.

02 Zoom region

In Zoom>Zoom Region, you can opt between ‘Full Screen Zoom’ or ‘Window Zoom’ and you also have full freedom, by tapping on the controller to resize the lens and determine how much of the screen is zoomed in.

03 Show Controller

Enable the ‘Show Controller’ option for a handy thumbstick to control the zoomed area. You can tap on this once to bring up a menu of zoom options, double-tap to zoom in and out or 3D Touch to peek-zoom.

04 Smart Typing

If you keep the ‘Smart Typing’ option turned on, then whenever you need to type text, the onscreen keyboard will appear the normal size while in zoom mode, making it easier to type.

05 Magnify on your iPhone

Go to Accessibility> Magnifier and turn on the option to use your iPhone camera as a magnifying glass. You can drag the icon from your App Library to create a shortcut on your Home Screen.