Pinch to zoom in Safari not working consistently on IOS 15

I figured out a hack to this problem. I start by pinching In to the page and without lifting my fingers slowly reverse and start to pinch out and it works every time. Moving slow is the key.

15.3 has finally fixed this problem.

With first tests on 15.3 I can say the issue is gone for web and mail. Hallelujah. Using iPhone X.

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.

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

As regards images or graphics in emails, or on webpages. I have also found that pinching to zoom in/out on the image/graphic causes more problems than the normal hassles with zoom.

I have found that if I carry out the ‘pinching’ on an area of the screen that does NOT have the image/graphic on it, so a bit of white space, or text, that it works more often than not.

Where I have specifically wanted to zoom on of the image or graphic, and have been totally unable to pinch to zoom, I have taken a screenshot and then looked at it in my Photos app.

I haven’t upgraded to 15.2 yet, but I’m doing that now to see if there’s any change.

Apple have had ample opportunity to look into this now and, as far as i

am aware, haven’t even acknowledged the problem, let alone fix it. Most frustrating.

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.

Have X and just got the 15.1 update last night and it started happening, per suggestions here I turned 3D off and it appears to have fixed the issue.

It’s definitely fixed in 15.3.

It sure looks like iOS 15.3 solved the issue on my iPhone XS. Finally. What a relief. 🙏🍾

Appears to be resolved on iOS 15.3 with my iPhone XS Max.

Too early to confirm but looks promising.

I have iOS 15.3 on my iPhone X for more than two days running and the problem did not occur any more. Pinch to zoom always worked in safari and mail.

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?

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.