How to Make the Text Bigger on Your iPhone So It's Easier to Read

Remember when the newspaper started printing what felt like smaller type every year? You'd hold it a little farther away, tilt it toward the lamp, maybe reach for the reading glasses. Then one day someone pointed out — the print hadn't changed at all.

Your iPhone has the opposite trick up its sleeve. You can tell it, once, to make the words bigger everywhere — in your text messages, your email, your contacts, your notes. You don't have to squint, and you don't have to hold the phone at arm's length. Here's how to do it in about a minute.

Where to Find the Setting

The setting lives in a place called Settings — think of it as the control panel for your whole phone. It's an app with a gray gear-shaped icon, usually right on your home screen.

Tap the Settings icon (the gray gear).
Scroll down and tap Display & Brightness.
Tap Text Size.

You'll see a slider — a little dot on a line, like the volume knob on an old radio. There are small letters on the left end and big letters on the right end.

Making the Words Bigger

Put your finger on the dot and slide it to the right. As you drag, the sample text at the top of the screen grows right along with it. That's a live preview — what you see there is what your messages and menus will look like.

Take your time. Slide it, look at the preview, slide it a bit more. When it feels comfortable to read without straining, just lift your finger and press the Home button (or swipe up from the bottom if your phone doesn't have a Home button). The change is saved automatically. No "Save" button to hunt for.

Open your Messages app or your Mail and take a look. The words should be noticeably larger.

If You Need It Even Bigger

The regular slider goes up to a certain size, but there's a second setting that goes much larger — useful if the first one didn't quite do the trick.

Go back to Settings.
Tap Accessibility (further down the list — this is Apple's word for features that make the phone easier to use).
Tap Display & Text Size.
Tap Larger Text.
At the top, turn on the switch next to Larger Accessibility Sizes. When a switch is green, it's on.

Now the slider at the bottom of that same screen will let you make the text much bigger than before. Again, drag the dot to the right until the preview feels right.

A Small Word of Warning

Very large text can sometimes cause buttons or words to run off the edge of the screen in certain apps. If a screen looks strange after you change the size, just come back to this same setting and nudge the slider a little to the left. Nothing is broken — you're just fine-tuning.

And if you ever want to go back to the way it was, slide the dot all the way to the middle. That's the standard size the phone came with.

Try It Today

Open Settings, tap Display & Brightness, then Text Size, and slide the dot to the right until the sample sentence at the top is comfortable to read. Then open a text message from someone you love and see the difference. Your eyes will thank you.

Need a hand with your technology? We're here to help. Give PorchSwing a call or book an appointment, and we'll walk you through it at your own pace — no rush, no jargon.