Pinch to zoom in Safari not working consistently on IOS 15

In addition to the OP’s excellently concise description, it’s also possible sometimes to double-tap the screen and it will zoom in a bit, however, it then refuses to zoom back out again.

i have an iPhone X, totally up to date iOS-wise.

Really glad I found this posted somewhere. It’s been driving me absolutely nuts and I haven’t been able to find anything anywhere that would tell me whether or not this was a new intended ‘feature’ in iOS 15 or a bug.

Seems that it is a bug, and a really really really annoying one.

Please please please Apple will you look into this and get it fixed a.s.a.p.?

Chiming in that this is incredibly annoying. iPhone XS, iOS 15.0.2. Same issue. I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it. Once in a while pinch to zoom works quickly, but usually I have to try it 5-10 times before anything happens.

Put a bug report in but arrrgh.

I’ve been poking around in the safari “Experimental Features” settings and may have a solution. I toggled the three settings called :

Lazy frame loading

Lazy image loading

Link preload responsive ima…

all ON.

I *think* it’s solved the issue. Can anyone verify?

No it definitely still happens on 15.1. It just may happen less often on some sites than the others, so you may not be noticing it right away. Problem happens in every app that uses WebKit for rendering content. Safari, Mail, any 3rd party browser.

Same issue here, iPhone XS Max.

This is only one of many new bugs and strange things happening to iPhone X(xx)’s since the new iOS 15 was released.

• alarm sound not ringing through headphones anymore (extremely frustrating)
• Touch ID now marks the words more often when all I want is to move the marker
• my phone is super fresh and battery life is good, but out of nowhere apps have started to freeze in suspicious ways

either you fix this or we all go buy old nokias on ebay

I updated my iphone X to 15.2.1 and pinch to zoom still does not work sometimes. I called the apple support. The man said

• threads like this or macroumors or reddit are not relevant to apple
• restore the iphone via dfu
• if the problem then still occurs, it is a hardware problem, because this problem is not listed at apple.
• he refused to register my problem and and did not report it to apple

in other words apple does not accept software problem reports from users.

Even i am facing the same issue. Hyper links are not working when we do a pinch in( Zoom in) and then click on it.

Sometimes though, refreshing the page and again doing a zoom would work (but it is erratic). This is not fixed in 15.0.1 release too.

15.0.2 - Pinch to zoom is still broken in the way described by OP after updating an hour ago. I am on an iPhone XS. 15.0.2 was a Security update, so not entirely surprising that this issue has not been addressed. However, I’m worried that because this only seems to be affecting the “X” line of iPhones that this may not be a priority for Apple to fix. Fingers crossed for a patch to resolve it ASAP because it sure is irritating!

I’m having the same issues on my Xs Max with links not working, pinch to zoom on email and Safari. I noticed immediately after the update. Not sure why Apple hasn’t fixed this issue. You would think their employees experiencing the same issues.

The only workaround I found is to scroll up or down over the image and while it’s scrolling pinch to zoom. It works all the time, but it has to be scrolling. Its super annoying that I have to do this.

Another workaround I've found is to touch the screen *extremely* lightly while pinching. That also seems to work pretty much every time, but is even more annoying than pinching while scrolling. Because of this light-touch workaround, and the devices that are affected, I suspect this bug has something to do with the 3D touch feature of these phones.

ooh! great catch! testing on my XS seemed to confirm this, so i disabled 3d touch in accessibility. pinch to zoom is now working much the same as it did pre-update. (still it tries to “zoom” me out of my current tab sometimes but otherwise is functional.)

I would suggest you to try it on a few different websites first. It's great if it worked for you, but disabling the 3D touch was the first thing I tried doing on my iPhone X, trying to fix this, and it ended up not making any difference. I'm not sure, but the problem may be happening more often on some website than the others.

I am grateful for these temporary fixes but Apple needs to provide a fix for this. I use the 3D Touch daily for work and having to either lightly or barely apply any pressure to zoom in and out and or disabling the 3D Touch feature which those who have it paid for) shouldn’t have the need to do so. Apple, please fix this issue.

Seeing the exact same issue precisely as described in the OP.

I thought this was an issue with Brave browser but having recently switched back to Safari I've noticed that this is where the issue is. I'm using an XS Max.

I disabled 3D touch long ago when they announced they would not be supporting for future iPhone models.

Can't believe something like this has to even be reported! Hasn't this yet been noticed by anyone at Apple?