Age tends to have a negative impact on our eyesight making it harder for a person to read. Also, people with a certain degree of visual impairment find it difficult to read the small text on phone screens. With phones being the new normal in the 21st century, companies have been focusing on all age groups. Several phone manufacturers have added the feature to customize the text size on your phone screen.
Apple is one of the biggest players in the market, it too has added the feature in iPhone. You can both, increase and decrease the text size from the default size as per the requirement on an iPhone.
When you increase the text size, lesser content will be displayed on the screen while in the case of smaller text size, more content will be displayed. Making text bigger isn’t just helpful to those with visual impairment but also comes in handy when going through a document or browsing through an app.
There are multiple settings that you can customize in order to increase the text size. If you don’t want to increase the text size altogether, you can go with the ‘Zoom’ setting which enlarges a particular section of the screen.
We will cover all the methods in the article and draw a comparison between the two sizes in the first section.
Making Text Bigger from Display Settings
The phone settings can be accessed and customized from the ‘Settings’ which resembles a gear sign, on the home screen. Tap it to the open the phone settings.
Scroll down and look for ‘Display and Brightness’ settings in the list.
In the ‘Display and Brightness’ settings, tap on ‘Text Size’ to increase it.
You will now see a slider at the bottom of the screen. When the slider is moved to the right, text size increases. And while moving it to the left, text size will decrease.
To move in either direction, tap and hold the slider, and then drag it. This setting is only applicable to apps that support ‘Dynamic Type’, which most of the apps do.
With the default text setting in place, this is how the ‘Google Chat’ app looks. This is to compare how the change in text size affects the text occupancy on the screen and also the relative increase.
Move your text size slider to the right to increase the text size and release it at the required/preferred level.
With the above text size settings in place, the corresponding increase is distinctly visible in the ‘Google Chat’ app. Notice how “you’ve” is now in the second line instead of the first which was the case earlier, due to an increase in text size. Similarly, the text size in other apps that support ‘Dynamic Type’ will increase as well.
Making Text Bigger from Accessibility Settings
In the accessibility settings, you have two options to change the text size, either to format the text to ‘Bold’ or to increase it size.
Employing ‘Bold Text’ to Make Text Bigger
In the iPhone settings, scroll down and tap on ‘Accessibility’ to increase the text size.
Next, tap ‘Display & Text Size’ under the ‘Vision’ section.
The first setting on this screen is to bolden the text. Boldening the text does not considerably increase the text size, but it certainly enhances visibility and clarity for those with a certain degree of visual impairment. To enable ‘Bold Text’, tap on the toggle right next to it.
After the settings is enabled, you can notice a stark difference in the text. Although, the size hasn’t changed much, the text appears to be enlarged and distinctly visible.
Employing Larger Text Settings to Make Text Bigger
When you opened the ‘Display & Text Size’ settings earlier to bolden the text, the next option in the list was ‘Larger Text’. Tap on ‘Larger Text’ to increase the text size.
Initially, you will find the same slider as was available in the ‘Text Size’ settings that we discussed earlier. In this setting, you can have more levels of text size to choose from once you tap on the toggle right next to ‘Larger Accessibility Sizes’.
Next, drag the slider to the right to increase the text size. As you move the slider, the size of text on the screen will change accordingly, thus helping you in choosing the required level to move the slider to.
Compare the text size in the last image and the one underneath after the text size has been altered by moving the slider. Moreover, you will notice how the text now occupies a larger portion of the screen which can be detrimental to some users. Therefore, you must always check how the text size has affected the apps you often use, before finalizing it.
Making Text Bigger by Zooming into the Screen
Many a time, a user may not prefer to increase the text size altogether since a lesser text is displayed on the screen. If you are one of them, the ‘Zoom’ feature is the go-to option.
To enable zoom on your iPhone, tap on ‘Accessibility’ in settings.
Next, tap on ‘Zoom’ in the list of features under ‘Vision’.
To enable ‘Zoom’, tap on the toggle next to it. The zoom feature of the iPhone works differently and can be confusing to many. It doesn’t work with two fingers as is the case with zooming in images on iPhone.
To zoom in on a particular location, double-tap three fingers.
Also, to move across the screen when zoomed in, you will have to drag the three fingers in the required direction.
To further zoom in or out, double-using the three fingers and drag them upwards to zoom-in and downwards to zoom out.
It is recommended that you enable the ‘Smart Typing’ feature so that the keyboard isn’t affected when zooming in or out. When enabled, the zoom feature will work only on the window and not the keyboard while you are typing.
Once you enable both ‘Zoom’ and ‘Smart Typing’, the color of toggles will change from grey to green.
If you scroll to the bottom of the screen, you will find the ‘Maximum Zoom Level’ section. It’s set to 5 by default and can be customized by moving the slider in either direction. Moving the slider to the right will increase the maximum zoom level while moving the slider to the left will decrease it.
Now that you have gone through the complete article, you know how to increase the text size Display settings, or simply bold text or use the zoom feature to enlarge a particular section.
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