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Pinch to zoom in Safari not working consistently on IOS 15

Ever since updating to IOS 15 I have noticed that pinch to zoom does not always work in Safari on my iPhone XS. I've never seen this issue prior to IOS 15. Here is what I see:


  • Load a page on Safari
  • Attempt pinch to zoom - sometimes it works immediately, other times it does not work.
  • Scroll the page up/down, then try pinch to zoom again - sometimes it works, sometimes it does not
  • Sometimes when pinch in to zoom works to zoom in, it will immediately break again and I cannot unzoom with 'pinch out' after numerous attempts. Eventually pinch out works again.


I have not seen this reported anywhere else, except for a short thread on reddit. In that thread (Anyone has issues with Pinch to Zoom using Safari on iOS 15 ?) users all had iPhones X, XS, XR, or the max versions running IOS 15.


I've tried killing Safari and restarting it, closing all tabs and reopening, and rebooting the phone. Nothing has resolved the issue.


Is anyone else seeing this issue with IOS 15?

iPhone XS, iOS 15

Posted on Sep 30, 2021 9:07 AM

Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 8, 2021 1:42 AM

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.)

156 replies

Dec 14, 2021 1:27 PM in response to nholm

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.

Oct 18, 2021 1:11 AM in response to runningman7900

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.?

Dec 14, 2021 12:02 PM in response to spta97

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.

Dec 25, 2021 8:01 AM in response to runningman7900

Issue still present with 15.2 update on iPhone X . Mostly, I noticed the problems by zooming in mail app. 6 times repeating till it works. I hate this issue. Quality of updates is going down. If I could, I would go back to iOS14. As someone saying to disable ios15 live text is a workaround. I can say this does not work on iphoneX, it does not support live text, so it can’t be deactivated. 782 people replied here to have the issue. Apple do anything now!

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Pinch to zoom in Safari not working consistently on IOS 15

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