Working in an office or in the city, you’re probably inundated with noise from people chattering, cars running and nearby music. Your iPhone has a built-in feature called Background Sounds for playing rain noises or white noise to tune it all out.
You don’t need to download any apps or pay a cent; it comes for free on your Mac and iPhone. Let me show you how it works.
iOS 18 is getting a bunch of cool new accessibility features this year, including bringing eye tracking to the iPhone for the first time. You also can feel haptic music, control your phone with custom voice commands, use your phone in the car without suffering from motion sickness, and improve the accuracy of Siri and dictation.
Check out our video to see it in action or keep reading below.
The iPhone 15 Pro’s customizable Action button lets you pick from several presets, including Accessibility — which lets you choose from 25 different accessibility features that you can toggle on or off. These features aren’t limited to the iPhone 15 Pro’s Action button, either. On any older iPhone, you can simply triple-click the side button to access those same 25 accessibility features.
Here are all 25 of the accessibility features you can assign to a button on your iPhone — and what they do.
Apple showcased some remarkable new accessibility features for people with disabilities Wednesday, including Eye Tracking, Music Haptics and Vocal Shortcuts.
The new features, coming later this year to Apple devices, harness Apple silicon, artificial intelligence and machine learning. They will come mainly to iPhone and iPad, though some new ones will appear in Vision Pro’s visionOS, too.
“We believe deeply in the transformative power of innovation to enrich lives,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a press release. “That’s why for nearly 40 years, Apple has championed inclusive design by embedding accessibility at the core of our hardware and software. We’re continuously pushing the boundaries of technology, and these new features reflect our long-standing commitment to delivering the best possible experience to all of our users.”
In iOS 17, the iPhone got a built-in text-to-speech feature called Live Speech. You can even use Live Speech with a digital version of your own voice called Personal Voice.
Apple devised Personal Voice for users “at risk of losing their ability to speak — such as those with a recent diagnosis of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or other conditions that can progressively impact speaking ability.” It was the subject of a touching and heartfelt video Apple made called “The Lost Voice.”
Here’s how to set up and use Live Speech.
If you haven’t looked at any of Apple’s accessibility features because you’re not blind or deaf, and don’t think they would make your life easier, you might be surprised.
Apple built a handful of accessibility features into iOS 17 that let people with various disabilities use the iPhone in new and unexpected ways. However, absolutely anyone can take advantage of these tools, which prove surprisingly helpful in certain situations.
You can already get live captions to watch videos silently, lock your phone into one app to keep people from snooping around, play soothing ocean or forest sounds and more.
In iOS 17, five accessibility features take things even further. Assistive Access simplifies your phone to its bare features to make it easier to use; Live Speech and Personal Voice let you type on the keyboard to speak using your own voice; Detection Mode and Point and Speak help you get around using your iPhone camera.
Our hands-on demo will show you what these features can do for you.
Apple’s newly announced Personal Voice technology enables an iPhone to read text in the user’s own voice. The same tech could be used to read incoming text messages in the sender’s own voice, making them feel more personal.
This isn’t a theory — Apple submitted a patent for exactly this idea in early 2023.
Just can’t wait for WWDC23? Apparently, Apple can’t either because it’s already starting announcing new features that will almost certainly be in iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS 14.
These are aimed at those with disabilities, and include Live Speech and Personal Voice. These will allow those with speech disabilities to participate in conversations in a synthesized voice that sounds like the user.
You can use a feature called Guided Access to lock down your iPhone to a single app before you hand it to a kid or someone else. You might want to let your offspring play a game, or pass your phone around for controlling music, or hand it off to show someone a video … but you probably don’t want them going rogue and reading your texts or calling your mom.
In Accessibility settings, you can enable Guided Access to limit your iPhone to a single app before you hand it off. It’s a kind of quick and dirty “guest mode.”
This will help you keep your phone — and your privacy — safe. You can even disable features like the volume buttons and set up time limits.
It’s easy to zoom in on your Mac display and get a closer look at your screen. If the text is just too small to read, or perhaps you’re making some graphics and you need pixel-perfect alignment, a simple tweak to your Mac settings is all you need.
Using your Mac’s Zoom feature, you can hit a keyboard shortcut or use a multitouch gesture to zoom in on your screen. I’ll show you how to use this handy feature. Plus, I’ll cover Hover Text and Display Scaling, two more features that help you embiggen the words on your Mac screen.
Live Captions, in iOS 16, generate subtitles of any audio playing in any app on your iPhone. Powered by the Neural Engine in Apple’s custom silicon, the capability to turn words from music and/or videos into real-time text is a boon to many users, in many different situations.
If you’re hard of hearing, for instance, the ability to see instant captions on the screen is a game changer. Or, if you don’t have headphones when you’re sitting in bed late at night and your partner is asleep – or you’re in any situation where you don’t want to make noise, like on the bus or in an office – you can turn on Live Captions to get subtitles.
The applications are endless and exciting. Here’s how to use Live Captions in iOS 16.
Apple’s next big thing might not be a car or an AR headset. Thanks to a rule change announced this week by the Food and Drug Administration, Cupertino could soon add hearing aids to its product lineup. The potential market is huge, and Apple stands uniquely positioned to disrupt the status quo.
The new rules allow companies like Apple to sell hearing aids over the counter and online, so buyers can set them up in the comfort of their own homes. Previously, if you wanted to buy hearing aids, your only option was to make an appointment for a hearing test and fitting at a specialist store.
This small change looks set to have a big impact. FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf told CNN he expects the ruling “will unleash the power of American industry to improve the technology.” And there’s one company in particular that has all the know-how to do just that — Apple.
Apple’s Door Detection uses advancements in hardware, software, and machine learning to help people who are blind or low vision use their iPhone and iPad to navigate the last few feet to their destination.
This is one of several innovative software features unveiled Tuesday with new ways for users with disabilities. These include Live Captions, Apple Watch Mirroring and more.
The other day I was walking with music blasting through my AirPods when I almost stepped in front of a speeding ambulance.
Luckily, the magical Sound Recognition feature on my iPhone was turned on and my AirPods recognized the wailing sirens. They silenced the music and piped the sirens into my ears instead, saving my bacon. It was amazing and quite magical.
Your iPhone can also listen and alert you for crying babies, running water, knocks on the door, barking dogs and more.
Here’s how to use it.
The iPhone is renowned for its many accessibility features. Accessibility settings can make text on the screen bigger, buttons easier to identify, animations less jarring and sound easier to hear.
An accessibility feature that is useful for everyone is Spoken Content. You can have your phone read out loud anything you have on-screen. This feature was designed for people who have trouble reading small text, but you will find it handy even if you don’t — in lots of situations.
You can have recipes read to you while your hands are busy cooking, quickly hear how to pronounce a word you don’t know — that’s what I use it for most of all — and more. You can even hear what you’re typing as you write.
Here’s how to turn on Spoken Content.
One of the upgrades to Accessibility in iOS and iPadOS 15 is a new Background Sounds feature that plays relaxing audio tracks to help you stay calm and focused, and to block out background distractions.
Here’s how to use it on iPhone and iPad.
An iPhone and AirPods can be used to listen to conversations without people knowing. Such iPhone spying is really just a tricky use of the Live Listen feature built into iOS.
And, even if you’re not a budding James Bond, knowing about this trick could keep someone from eavesdropping on you. Here’s what to do if you want to use your iPhone to spy on someone. (Or what to watch out for if you don’t want to fall victim to iPhone spying.)
iOS and iPadOS 15 give you the ability to specify accessibility settings for individual apps. The change lets you adjust things like text size, increase contrast, invert colors and more only where you need to.
Reachability remains alive and well in iOS 14 — even if you have an iPhone without a Home button. The feature, which makes even the largest iPhone models easier to operate with one hand, is super-simple to use with just a quick flick of the thumb.
However, Reachability is disabled by default, so you’ll need to turn it on. Here’s how to enable and use Reachability in the latest iPhone firmware.
Apple plans to release software updates this year that will make its devices far easier to use for people with mobility, vision, hearing and cognitive disabilities.
The features include AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch, which offers astonishing new ways for people with limited mobility to control the smartwatch without tapping its screen. The new feature uses Apple Watch’s array of sensors to interpret the wearer’s movement into interactions.
Cupertino showcased AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch — which lets users maneuver a cursor on the wearable’s screen simply by clenching their fist and pinching their fingers together, among other things — in a remarkable video. (We embedded the video below — definitely watch it.)
But AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch is just the beginning of Apple’s latest big push into accessibility.
Apple just overhauled its Accessibility website, emphasizing all the ways these built-in features can make using your iPhone and other gear easier to use. The updated Accessibility page is now headed up by a banner advertising “built‑in features that work the way you do. Make them yours, and make something wonderful.”
It goes on to describe the various tools — broken into Vision, Mobility, Hearing and Cognitive categories — that Apple offers users as built-in features within its software.
Apple has partnered with Washington D.C.’s Gallaudet University — the world’s leading university for deaf, hard of hearing, and deafblind students — to offer all students and faculty Apple devices. Learners and teachers alike will receive an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and SmartFolio for iPad Pro.
The offer is also available to students and teachers at the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center, Gallaudet’s partner program for students in grades K-12.
Dean Hudson helped develop VoiceOver. With the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act approaching, he looks back on the creation of this Apple tech to describe what’s happening on iPhone and Mac displays to those who are blind or low vision.
Now accessibility technical evangelist at Apple, Hudson promises that Apple remains committed to enabling everyone to use its products. Because they’re life changing to those who need them.
One of many hidden new features in iOS 14 is an option to set new shortcuts that are activated by tapping the back of your iPhone. It’s a new accessibility option that can be used for things like returning to the Home screen, snapping a screenshot, muting your device, and more. Here’s how it works.
iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 has an impressive accessibility feature that can listen out for sounds like running water, a person knocking on the door, smoke alarms, babies crying, and more — and then warn users about it with an on-screen notification.
It’s an incredibly smart feature, based on machine learning technology, that could range from useful to life-saving. Who says that always-listening tech has to be limited to “Hey, Siri”?