I love my new Apple iPhone 6, but the text is too darn small for these old eyes. Is there some way to make it bigger and easier to read on the iPhone?
Congrats on your new iPhone. They’re terrific devices with a million features and functions. And rumor has it they can receive phone calls too, though why people would use a portable computer as a phone is a bit puzzling. 🙂
More seriously, both iOS – the operating system on your iPhone and iPad – and Android – the competing operating system on Samsung, LG, and other non-Apple smartphones – has a number of what they call “accessibility” settings that can make your phone work better for you in all sorts of ways. You can make the screen higher contrast, have a visible bell if you don’t like a ringtone, make the text under your finger get extra, extra big, and even have the phone speak to you if you don’t like having to constantly look at it.
But let’s just focus on text size, because that’s an easy one!
To start, launch the “Settings” app, then swipe down to reveal the search box:
Indeed, one of the first things to learn about your Apple iPhone is that the Settings app has a search box that works really well. Why it’s hidden is anyone’s guess, but a quick ‘pull down’ and it shows up, ready to use.
So let’s use it. Type in “text” and watch all the different options appear:
It’s a bit confusing, actually, because there’s more than one place you can change the text size: in the regular settings you can make the text bigger to a point, then in accessibility you can make it a lot bigger. Not only that, you can make the text all appear in bold to make it a bit easier to read and even respond to phone calls with an automatic text message. So many choices!
Let’s start with the regular text size setting. That’s the fourth entry above, “Text Size” in Display & Brightness. Tap on that particular choice and you’ll end up here:
Notice the words “Apps that support Dynamic Type will adjust to your preferred reading size below.” Now tap and drag the little white circle on the line and move it to the right. The text will get bigger!
But what if that’s not big enough for you to really comfortably read your iPhone screen? Let’s go back to Settings and again look at the search results for the search “text”:
Compare this with the earlier search results and you’ll notice that the text is bigger and it’s easier to read! Hurray!
Let’s go further, however. Tap on match #2, “Larger Text” in General / Accessibility.
Looks the same, doesn’t it? But there’s a new switch on top. Tap on the slider graphic to the right of “Larger Accessibility Sizes” and suddenly the sliding scale along the bottom adds even bigger options:
Now you can make the text really, really big by tapping and dragging the white circle further to the right.
To the point where it gets REALLY BIG…
That’s how it’s done. Now you can set the size that works best for your eyesight and iPhone usage. Note also that many apps ignore this setting so while the iOS system itself should be easier to use with the text set larger, that doesn’t mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are going to be easier to read too!
Linkedin App on iPhone doesn’t respond to this setting and it very difficult to read. How can I reach them to make them aware of this issue.