ZDNet: Free iPhone and Android Magnifier Apps Beat Camera Zoom for Reading Small Text

The iPhone Magnifier has been preinstalled as an accessibility tool on iPhone and iPad since 2016 and became a standalone app with iOS 14 in 2020. As of last year, it is also available on macOS. To open it, users swipe down to search for "Magnifier" and tap the black square icon. Moving the yellow dot to the left or right zooms the view in or out. The article stresses that this is not the same as zooming in the Camera app.

Beyond magnification, the iPhone app can capture a photo of text. After tapping Capture, a Reader option appears at the bottom right of the screen. Reader shows a plain-text transcript and can read the words aloud. Capture can also share or save the image. Users can add Detect, a hidden setting that can be shown in the Control Panel. Pressing and holding Detect brings up options for describing Scenes, Text, or Point & Speak. With Text enabled, Detect reads text aloud automatically; with Scenes, it describes what is happening on the screen.

The app lets users save custom settings as Activities. For example, a restaurant activity can be created by tapping Activities, choosing Save As New Activity, and naming it with an icon such as a fork and knife. Within that activity, Zoom and Flashlight can be set as primary controls, and brightness, contrast, filters, focus lock, cameras, and capture mode can be enabled as needed.

On the Android side, ZDNet's reviewer tested Magnifier + Flashlight, a free app with more than 10 million downloads on Google Play and a 4.9 rating across nearly 250,000 reviews. The reviewer, who normally uses the Google Magnifier app on a Pixel phone, tested the app in a tire-shop lobby and was able to read a sign across the room describing tire tread; with normal vision he could see the sign but could not read most of its text. The app also helped read medicine-bottle instructions, nutrition labels, serial numbers, and even thread a needle.

Magnifier + Flashlight works like camera zoom but offers extra tools. It can freeze the image on screen without saving it to the camera roll, invert colors to make text easier to read, and turn on the phone's flash for dim settings. A slider controls zoom precisely, unlike several other apps the reviewer tried that zoom in fixed increments.

The reviewer called the app a strong alternative to the built-in Google Magnifier, but said he missed the small reference window in Google's app that shows where the camera is pointed. The app is free with small ads; a paid version costs $1.99 a year.

ZDNet's Android article also notes that Samsung phones have a built-in magnifier feature and that several similar apps are on Google Play. The iPhone article says Android users have a similar Google Magnifier app available.