Making your phone easier on your eyes and ears: the settings worth ten minutes

Every phone’s Settings has a tucked-away section called Accessibility. It was designed for people with serious sight or hearing loss, and it works beautifully for the much larger group who need reading glasses and turn the television up a bit. Nothing in it costs money, nothing can break the phone, and everything below can be undone by flicking the same switch back.

Menu names move around between models and software versions, so if a step does not match what you see, use the search box at the top of Settings — type “text size”, “magnif” or “caption”.

Bigger text: the one change that fixes most things

Start here. Larger text changes every menu, message and web page at once.

iPhone. Apple gives two routes. The everyday one: “Go to Settings > Display & Brightness, then select Text Size. Drag the slider to select the font size you want.” If the largest setting there is still not enough: “Go to Settings > Accessibility, then select Display & Text Size. Tap Larger Text for larger font options. Drag the slider to select the font size you want.”

Android. Google’s instructions are even shorter: “On your device, open the Settings app. Search and select Font size. To change your preferred font size, move the slider left or right.” A separate “Display size” slider enlarges buttons and icons too. For heavier lettering: “Tap Accessibility and then Display size and text. Turn Bold text on or off.”

Go one notch at a time; a big jump can push text off the edge of some apps.

The magnifier: a magnifying glass you already carry

Menus, medicine labels, the serial number on the back of the router.

iPhone. Apple’s Magnifier is an app, and its user guide describes it as a tool to “magnify or describe things around you.” Its Detection Mode can also “detect text around you and have it read out loud.” Look for Magnifier in your app list, or search Settings for “Magnifier”; Apple’s support page (linked below) walks through opening it and customising its controls.

Android. Screen magnification is built into Settings. “Open your device’s Settings app. Tap Accessibility and then Magnification. Turn on Magnification shortcut.” You then pick a trigger — an on-screen button, pressing and holding both volume keys, or tapping the screen three times. Once on, “drag 2 fingers to move around the screen” and “pinch with 2 fingers to adjust zoom.” Full-screen or partial-screen is chosen under “Magnification type.”

Live captions: subtitles for real life

If you replay voice messages, or turn the speaker up until the room objects, captions are the answer: the phone writes on the screen whatever it is playing.

Android. Google calls it Live Caption: “With a single tap, Live Caption automatically captions speech on your device. You can use it on media like videos, podcasts, phone calls, video calls, and audio messages.” To turn it on: “Press the volume button. Under the volume controls, tap More… and then Live Caption… and then Done.” One practical note from Google: “When you use Live Caption for the first time, you need to connect to Wi-Fi to download the default language pack.” Language support depends on the phone — older Pixel models are English-only; newer Pixels and selected other phones handle English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Hindi, Spanish and more.

iPhone. Apple offers a Live Captions feature as well, covered in the iPhone User Guide under “Get live captions of spoken audio on iPhone.” We could not confirm the exact menu path from Apple’s page, so the reliable route is to open Settings and search for “Live Captions”, or follow the guide page linked below.

Hearing aids: pairing directly with the phone

Modern hearing aids can connect to a phone like wireless headphones, so calls and video go straight into your ears. Ask your audiologist whether yours support it.

iPhone. Apple calls these Made for iPhone (MFi) hearing devices and publishes a list of compatible models. The steps: “Make sure iOS or iPadOS is up to date on your iPhone or iPad”, “open the Settings app”, “tap Accessibility, then tap Hearing Devices”, then “tap Pair MFi Hearing Device, then follow the onscreen instructions.” Once paired there is a bonus called Live Listen: “your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch becomes a remote microphone that sends sound to your Made for iPhone (MFi) hearing device.” Put the phone near whoever you are trying to hear in a noisy restaurant. Under Hearing Devices, tap your device’s name, then Start Live Listen.

Android. Google gives two routes. For any Bluetooth hearing aid: “Open your device’s Settings app. Tap Connected devices and then Pair new device. Choose your hearing aid from the list of available devices.” For hearing aids built to Android’s own hearing-aid standard (ask your audiologist whether yours are “ASHA-compatible”), the better route is “Accessibility and then Hearing devices and then Pair new device.” With a pair, “wait for the first hearing aid to connect, then tap the other.” Some features need Android 14 or later.

While you are in there

Two habits make this stick. Use the magnifier shortcut a few times in the first week, or you will forget it exists. And when a friend complains they cannot read their phone, show them the text-size slider — thirty seconds, and the most useful thing you will do for them all month.

For the rest of the phone, start with Tech confidence after 50: the complete guide. Bigger text also makes dodgy messages easier to spot — How to spot a scam text, email or call shows what to look for, and our Tech Confident scam-proof guide turns it into a printable checklist for beside the phone.

This week

• Text size up one notch, on the everyday slider.
• Magnifier shortcut on, and tested on something small.
• Captions turned on for one video or voice message.
• Hearing aids: one question to your audiologist about pairing.