How to set per-app Accessibility controls in iOS and iPadOS

People with low vision or other issues reading text and viewing objects on a screen benefit enormously from iOS and iPadOS’s Accessibility features. They’re also useful for everyone who finds the defaults for text and buttons that Apple set or that appear in apps to not fit within their range of visual acuity.

Apple has a little-used feature that can enhance Accessibility that’s likely overlooked by most users: Per-App Settings. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Per-App Settings whether or not you have turned on any Accessibility features.

If you have enabled Accessibility options, such as a larger text size or higher contrast, you can override those changes for a particular app. Apple makes text, button shape, labels, transparency, contrast, color differentiation, and inversion available, as well as control over motion, video auto-playing, and cross-fades.

So if you have bumped up the text size, but one of your apps can’t resize correctly with those settings, add it to Per-App Settings and reduce the text size so you can continue to use the app—although with less visual comfort. (You can also write the developer and let them know with screen captures what’s wrong.)

With no Accessibility options turned on, you can enable them in specific apps using the same setting. Say the buttons or functions of buttons are hard to read in an app? Turn on Button Shapes and Labels and see if that helps.

Accessibility is for everyone, and this out-of-the-way feature helps demonstrate that principle.

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