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iOS 9 zoom bug big problem!

sometimes history repeats itself

when iOS 8 came out i reported almost the same bug regarding one of the accessibility features, zoom in ios

now with the release of iOS 9 zoom feature is even worse 😟

the three finger gesture sometimes works sometimes it doesnt

and when it does when you move around in the zoom area with two fingers the screen is almost flickering

the only solution, temporary of course that i have found is to use the control switch menu shortcut so as to have this and manually adjust the zoom and work around a document or whatever i would like to see

this is a huge issue for me and for any other visual impaired user making it almost impossible to use the device under iOS 9

for any user either vision impaired or with normal vision, can you please replicate this and confirm this? Try and enable the zoom and then use the three finger gesture to zoom in an app or on the home screen

I'm very worried and very disappointed since this is the main reason i stick to apple for so many years. accessibility tools have been on iOS devices since day one and they have been the best in comparison with the rest of the mobile OS out there

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4

Posted on Sep 16, 2015 11:20 PM

Best reply

Texxas

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Sep 20, 2015 3:09 AM

Hello ioannisfromaddison,

I created an account here just to reply to your message.

I too am visually impaired and use the three finger double-tap zoom gesture a throusand times a day. Since iOS 8.x I have had the bug where the full-screen zoom function randomly switches to the window zoom function. I have also had a bug where sometimes the zoom function doesnt know which way is up, and you have to slide three fingers right and left instead of up and down to increase/decrease the zoom level. I have just learned to live with those, and no update to iOS 8 has fixed them

To answer you question about iOS 9, I too have the EXACT SAME problems you are describing. I am experiencing;

Sometimes three finger double-tap zoom will work fine, zooming in and out.

Sometimes three finger double-tap zoom will zoom in, but a repeat three finger double-tap zoom will not zoom back out.

Sometimes three finger double-tap zoom will do nothing, even after three finger double-tapping 10 times in a row.

I very often three finger double-tap and hold the second tap to then slide up and down to adjust the zoom level for that particular screen. For instance, I three finger double-tap hold and slide up and down to view faces on Instagram posts, as each photo is different in scale, etc.

Sometimes three finger double-tap hold and slide will zoom in but not immediately adjust the scale as it should when sliding.

Sometimes three finger double-tap hold and slide will zoom in but will bring up the Spotlight Search page out of nowhere!

Sometimes three finger double-tap hold and slide will do nothing, even after three finger double-tap and sliding 10 times over and over again.

As I said, I three finger double-tap zoom in and out thousands of times a day, so if even one zoom attempt goes awry it is jarring. Within 10 minutes of having the iOS over-the-air update, I was exeriencing hundreds of failed zoom attempts, leaving the new iOS update infuriating and mostly unusable.

Restarting the iPad several times did not help.

Restoring the iPad Air with a downloaded iOS 9 .ipsw file and NOT restoring any settings and setting the iPad up as a new iPad, meaning as clean as you can get, did not help and the zoom function bugs were just as present.

Restoring the iPad Air a second time with the above process did not help.

Finally, restoring the iPad Air with a downoaded iOS 8.x.x -- whatever the latest version is -- got me back to where I was before and at least I can live with the occasioanl iOS 8 zoom function bug.

Thank you for posting your issues here, as I figured it was just me and my iPad acting up on iOS 8 and totally screwed on iOS 9 leaving me to consider purchasing a new iPad.

I don't know much about .ipsw restore files, but I know that Apple stops "signing" older versions at some point, making it impossible to restore to a previous version. That is why I quickly went back to iOS 8. I will stay here until iOS 9 is fixed, even though I have no idea how one would be able to tell.

If you can, consider restoring back to iOS 8 on your device. As you've noticed, iOS 9 is not worth it yet for those in our situation.

View in context

36 replies

Oct 6, 2015 7:07 AM in response to eNovator

3 finger double tap is triggering single tap.
Causes mistaken calls and makes banking difficult.

Zoom has never been as good as it was iOS7.

I noticed the BankSA app was doing sinlge taps rather than zoom in iOS8 in a recent upgrade, this might mean it was an API in iOS8 not just iOS9 that has this issue.

Best work around is to keep tying to three finger triple tap and then zoom out. IT then resets the screen and you can try agin.

Concerned that this is note ever going to work like it did prior to iOS8 if 3D Touch is not correctly integrated with Accessability.

Accessibility has always made Apple user interfaces great to use, any comprimise will hurt a lot of users.

Zoom features breaking in early releases makes it hard for vision impaired user to be developers and early adopters of BETA releases.

Please Apple make suer you get this right, I am sure you can get a lot of early feedback on zoom changes I am always happy to give feedback.

I have iPhone 6 Plus

eNovator

Level 1

8 points

Oct 6, 2015 8:58 AM in response to LowVisionMacGuru

i have an iPhone 6 64gb and an iPad air 2

on my iPhone i am still on iOS 8!and this is the first time that i didn't upgrade!!and now that apple doesn't sign back to iOS 8.4.1 so as to downgrade i will not upgrade to iOS 9 😟

too bad since i have seen some feature that i like on my iPad like back to the app and split view and many more but there will be no use if i can't see anything

when i first noticed this i knew there would be an issue..and yes i have sent this as feedback and as an email to Tim Coo himself!

obviously i am not expecting an answer from him, busy man these days but i expect a fix!

Oct 6, 2015 9:25 AM in response to ioannisfromaddison

just a note

i wanted to press that i liked the post of LowVisionMacGuru

but accidentally pressed "this solved my question"

unfortunately i can't undo this and of course the issue hasn't been resolved!

Oct 8, 2015 4:20 PM in response to ioannisfromaddison

HI I am so glad I have found this.discussion. I couldn't work out why this huge problem seemed to be treated with such low priority and larger national organisations were doing so little to complain. I have all the three finger zoom problems mentioned here as do all the people, who are VI, who I support. with ipads and phones as a volunteer.

THe other equally big problems are with text messaging. The text field you type your message into is the ONLY part of the screen impossible to zoom into. The window / full screen flipping all over the place.

THe other problem is the follow focus not working in pages or word.

I Have noticed that elderly VI ipad users are giving up with their ipads because of this. Phoning Apple support and getting up the chain of managers as far as i can reveals a stunning lack of awareness on the part of Apple engineers.

GLad to find this thread and see its not only me

Oct 8, 2015 10:26 PM in response to philhibbert

glad to see that the thread has gathered people from around the world regarding this issue unfortunately to this ugly issue that trouble us so much

since there is an assumption that the lag and problem in zoom is said to be caused by the new 3d touch feature my thought is to see this in person. what do i mean....im planning a trip and visit an apple store and test the zoom feature on the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s plus and see if the problem is there etoo

i guess that since the problem is OS based i would see this too

but as everyone mentioned and as i have already said..we need to keep on pressing and publishing this issue to as many people as we can

people with visual impairment need this feature back as it used to be

Zoom and Voice over are our "eyes"

taking this features away or making them unusable makes things so difficult 😟

Oct 10, 2015 3:06 PM in response to Wassock

Go to the nearest Apple Store and explain your problems ! I just come back from there and after trying everything, they gave me a new iphone 6. The reason is that i have experienced a lot of problems with ios 9.

Texxas

Level 1

0 points

Oct 10, 2015 4:52 PM in response to edsan2015

@edsan2015

Can you tell me what device you went in with that was having the problems? Can you confirm that the new device you walked out with does NOT have any zooming problems? The reason I ask, is that I can't tell if these zooming problems are affecting all devices or only a select few. If I could confirm that it is only a small amount of devices that are being affected, then I would just trash my "affected" iPad Air and just go buy a new Air 2. However, if it is a wide-spread iOS 9 bug, then I don't want to waste that money.

Oct 10, 2015 6:13 PM in response to Texxas

These are IOS problems. I have checked several different iphones and ipads in a store and they all pretty much have the same problems, so changing your device would noy solve anything. The apple store staff were completely unaware of these problems in IOS that visually impaired people have,were very sympathetic but were unable to do anything. It is easy to feel helpless, but it needs as many people to post and to contact apple support

Oct 12, 2015 11:11 PM in response to edsan2015

this is not hardware related

this is iOS 9 related issue/bug that needs to be addressed

not sure if this issue exists on the new iPhones, since i haven't got my hands on he new devices

but the problem exists on iPhone 6 and iPad air 2 that i have

also going to the apple store doesn't mean that all your accessibility issues will be resolved since not every employee is aware of the issue or knows what are the accessibility features

i remember i was at an apple store a couple of years back and not many employees knew about certain characteristics on the zoom feature

Anneke75

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2015 7:33 AM in response to ioannisfromaddison

I created an account as well especially because of this problem. Ever since I updated my device to IOS 9.0.2 things have gone wrong. Before that, I used the three fingers double-tap a billion times so to speak; when I was reading through some tekst with different fonts, I even swiped left and right to decrease or increase the zoom. None of those functions is still working nowadays. Neither on both other iPads I had to chance to try it on. The only thing that is still working is to switch the zoom-button on and off if you go to the 'accessiblity' menu in settings.

With the help of Apple Support, I even tried re-installing the Original settings on my iPad which didn't help AT ALL. Although they were very symphatetic, they still didn't believe this was related to the update... Can you believe that? Their engineering team replied I did it wrong... I had to tap-release-tap-release... I don't think they understood what I wanted to say although I explained myself a Thousand times!

Anyway, sounds like buying another device won't solve the problem??? So we just have to keep our fingers crossed that any bug-fixing update will be released ASAP??? I used to adore Apple and what they did for accessiblity but now....

Positive thoughts, hey... Let's hope it'll be resolved SOON!!!

Oct 13, 2015 7:42 AM in response to Anneke75

welcome on board and glad you shard your views on this

i think this will be fixed on upcoming iOS 9.1 or art least i hope!judging from the pre release of 9.1 i think things are getting better!

Oct 15, 2015 12:27 AM in response to ioannisfromaddison

Def glad to see that I'm not the only one

I have been an iphone user in the early days since 3gs, Few years ago I upgraded to iphone 5 and was always cautious about upgrading ios due to the unreliability of "new updates". Even to this day my iphone 5 is on ios 5 still. Unfortunately, my phone is dying recentlyso I had upgraded to 6s first. After a day of using it, I hated the lag and unpractical designs of the new IOS and 3d touch function. I noticed that although tripple tap launches zoom, in order for you to "drag" and increase/decrease zoom would require a strong and firm pressure hold on the phone to change magnifications and zoom in. For such a high end product, it failed to meet my simple requirement of straightforward zoom like in ios6/7. I decided to return the phone and saught for an older iphone 6 plus.

Although much cheaper in comparison to the 6s plus. It still had major issues with zoom lag time and insensitivity. The zooming in and out from left and right is very difficult to use and often does not work for me. Triple tap is sometimes work and sometimes doesn't so it's a coin toss.

I've began searching for ways to downgrade to ios 6 or 7. But its hard to find a phone that has/meets the criteria to downgrade. Iｍａｙ　ｇｏ　ａｓ　ｆａｒ　ａｓ　ｂｕｙｉｎｇ　ａｎ　ｏｌｄ　５　ａｇａｉｎ　ｊｕｓｔ　ｓｏ　Ｉcan use older ios and not have to deal with these ridiculous issues.

I've stuck with Apple not because it is cool but hands down their zoom process in ios 6/7 were smooth and an industry leader in accessibility. If they are just as bad as an Android, then I may be better off not paying for this premium and get an android phone, since it's poorly designed anyways.

Perhaps Apple can offer an option for visually imparied people to downgrade back to ios 6 or 7 to ensure we are able to use the most basic function of zoom and carry out our activities without the frustrations.

celcias

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2015 10:47 PM in response to Snowman_22

I just updated to IOS 9.0.2 and the first thing that I noticed was that The zoom was changed. Before, I could do a double tap with three fingers and slide up to increase the zoom level and then immediately do a double tap with three fingers and slide down to decrease the zoom level. This was great! Now since the update, I need to wait 2 full seconds before I can do a double tap with three fingers and slide up/down to increase/decrease the zoom level. It currently restricts the zooming behavior to a double tap with three fingers to zoom in, and a double tap with three fingers to zoom out. There is no immediate adjusting for different image sizes. Please fix this Apple since Im stuck and can not downgrade to fix this and depend on this accessibility for everyday use.

Anneke75

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2015 11:41 AM in response to celcias

Hi everyone,

Just updated to IOS 9.1 and I'm happy to let you know the three-finger double tap to increase or decrease the zoom function is working again!!! Yayyy!!! No idea yet if there is anything else concerning the zoom function not working properly... We'll see! But thank you Apple for resolving this problem! You guys had me thinking that I wasn't able to perform a gesture I've been doing for years now the right way... Started doubting myself! ;-)

Sooo... seems like my iPad can stay after all! ;-)

Oct 22, 2015 1:42 PM in response to ioannisfromaddison

9.1 it works again I can confirm on my iPad air2! Oh happy day!

iOS 9 zoom bug big problem!