iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Zooming

The iPhone may be a neat little computer, but it's a neat little computer; it has the smallest screen of any laptop on the market. Every now and then, you might need a little help reading small text or inspecting those tiny graphics.

If you turn on Zoom (in Settings→General→Accessibility), then you can magnify the screen whenever it's convenient, up to 500 percent. Of course, the screen image is now too big to fit the physical glass of the iPhone, so you'll need a way to scroll around on your jumbo virtual screen. Here's the scheme:

• Turn zooming on or off by tapping the screen with three fingers.

  (That's why you can't use Zoom while VoiceOver is also turned on; the three-finger tap has a different function in each.) The screen is now 200 percent of original size.

• Pan around the virtual giant screen by dragging or flicking with three fingers.

  Tip

  Once you begin a three-finger drag, you can lift two of your fingers. You can slide the remaining finger close to any screen border to continue scrolling in that direction—faster the closer you are to the edge.

• Zoom in more or less by double-tap/dragging with three fingers. It's like double-tapping, except that you leave your fingers down on the second tap—and drag them upward to zoom in more (up to 500 percent), or down to zoom out again.

Tip

Once again, you can lift two of your three fingers after the dragging has begun. That way, it's easier to see what you're doing.