On my previous phone, the 2020 iPhone SE, I could softly double tap the home button and bring the top half of the screen down and within reach of my thumb, something I found myself using often. Per Apple's instructions, for phones with face ID it says to swipe down near the bottom of the screen to use reachability but I cannot get this to work. I've confirmed reachability is enabled in touch settings. I also tried with VO off because I have enough vision to see if the upper half of the display is black hence the feature working, but still no luck. Anyone else with a face ID iPhone model able to use this feature? If so, would love to know how you achieved it.
Comments
Gesture
The gesture is differentIf using VoiceOver - you need to slide one finger up from the bottom edge of the iPhone until you feel the first vibration, then quickly flick your finger down.
When I tested this in the past, I found it somewhat fiddly to perform consistently. But, that's likely me and giving it little time to become learned muscle memory.
Thank you! Works like a charm
Yeah, Apple was totalling missing that first part of the gesture on their help page. That worked great. Thank you! Here's all it says on Apple's help page:
"On an iPhone with Face ID: Swipe down on the bottom edge of the screen."
(https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/reachability-iph145eba8e9/ios)
lol. I'll be providing page feedback so they can make that clearer.
The problem with that guide…
The problem with that guide is they not thinking about voiceOver. They rarely do, probably because most people are sighted and/or someone else will do it for them... but yeah. That's why apple support is not really the place you want to go for VO help. Also, on the official apple forums, you can search for say, braille and some stuff will come up, but usually the specialists will come in and give some hopeless advice like "Make sure the display is supported." Hah! And I don't even think the display list is up to date—Seeing that I have a display not on the list and it works just fine, including unpairing it and repairing it in the time the list didn't have it. But yeah, that's just apple.