Pinch to zoom in Safari not working consistently on IOS 15

I have exact same issue Xs Max. As previously described, same issue: won’t pinch zoom, gets stuck and won’t zoom out, sometimes if I scroll off image to text, I can zoom in or out. Also, sometimes if I scroll page up and down, it works again.

I just played around in a few other open tabs and still seem to be getting great results with 3D off. Go figure, but yeah I do hope apple comes up with a permanent fix, but not optimistic as it only seems to be happening with our older models.

Well it’s back to happening more often, so much for that “fix”. I anticipate more problems like this happening with the iPhone X, I’ve been looking for an excuse to go buy a new one, guess this is it.

I have had this issue a while (iPhone XS Max, iOS 15.1), not really understanding what caused it. Thanks for this post and replies I know I am not alone :)

I tested a bit more, and it seems that the actual problem is one of detecting the two-finger touch as really being two fingers, instead of one + another accidental one. That is, if you are carefull to hit the screen with the two fingers you want to pinch with at exactly the same time, the pinch will work. If they hit slightly out of sync - bad luck.

That is, it seems to be a regression with detecting two-finger touches on the X series iPhones in iOS 15. I hope this helps bring the issue closer to a solution.

Hello all,

in addition to my very early comments at the beginning of this thread, and from much experimenting with my iPhone X Safari browser, I have discovered something that may be of help, though purely as a workaround, or get-me-by, as it doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

I have discovered that, with perseverance (word of the year (2021) here in the U.K. apparently), and a little bit of fettling of the screen, zoom and shrink can again be achieved with two fingers in Safari.

I have found that, once you have loaded up the page you want to be looking at, if you scroll the screen (one finger) either up, or down, a line or so at a time, and then try to zoom or shrink the screen, with two fingers as per normal, and then repeat that little jiggling of the screen, it will eventually work. From what I have found it will always finally succumb to your dogged determination.

Yes, it’s a pita. Yes, you shouldn’t have to do this. Yes, it seems that the Apple gods are dragging their heels in even recognising this as a problem, let alone fixing it. I just hope that this may help

some of you while we await the Angel of Steve Jobs to descend, bestowing upon us all the ‘Heavenly Patch’ ready for immediate install.

Let me know how you get on, and apologies if this has been suggested already, I didn’t have time to reread the entire thread.

Rich

Apple should give us the option to downgrade/revert if the iOS software when we encounter problems like these. We shouldn’t have the need to disable or perform work arounds. They own the product and software and should be a no brained for them to fix. And these phones are not cheap to say the least.

The modification of the experimental settings did not fix the issue. For example, using the experimental settings, if I go to nytimes.com, I can pinch zoom in and out. However, if I go to facebook.com or twitter.com, the pinch zoom function is broken. I tested this on my wife's iphone 8, and pinch zoom works perfectly on the sites I mentioned above.

Same here, can’t pinch-to-zoom on Safari or Chrome or Mail. I thought it was a problem with my fingers at first, lol. This issue has been around for a couple months and still no update??

Phone is iPhone XS Max, 64 gig.

Seems to be a problem with “Live Text”. I turned it off and zoom is much better.

Curious if it helps others.

To disable Live Text:

Settings >

General >

Language and Region >

Live Text

I rebooted after the change using volume up, volume down and holding power until the phone rebooted, but this may not be necessary.

Hey Apple! Bugs like this in older phones that go un-fixed for a long time.. it doesn’t make people upgrade, it makes them change brand!

As an iPhone X user on ios15.x this bug is really annoying, I wish I’d stayed on ios14.

Agreed. You would think Apple have a fix for this and yet they continue to prioritize what they think it’s best. However they need to remember that the consumer drives their sales and stocks and ignoring these highly frustrating glitches they’ve caused is another way to look at other devices that doesn’t have these everyday functionality nuances.

Try to turn off Text Size adjustment (set to the default value) in Settings > Display & Brightness.

Subjectively, it seems to me that the error then became less apparent. However, scripts on some pages still cause this bug.

I'm on iPhone X / 15.2 and it's definitely not fixed for me either. I don't think it's any better either. It's just that I've become more conscious that if I'm touching the screen extremely lightly, the pinch gesture is more likely to work, so that's what I'm doing now. But any time I press on it normally, it fails at least 50% of the time.

Xs Max. I notice if there’s a graphic in the email it makes it even hard to pinch and zoom. The only work around from another person who post is to very lightly place both fingers to zoom in or out which is not always practical. It’s good to have something better than nothing at the moment. Wish they fix this. I have to go to my Mac to respond to work now.