How to increase the text size on your iPhone or iPad

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to change the overall text size to a level that makes it comfortable to view the contents on the screen of your iPhone or iPad.

iPhone Notes app showing text in three different sizes

Adjusting the size of text content is crucial for people who suffer from astigmatism or other vision problems. Doing so will help reduce eye strain so you won’t have to squint when reading your email, surfing the web, and more.

Related: 21 useful iPhone tips for parents and older people

Increase text size on iPhone and iPad

Follow these steps to change the system font size in Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Phone, Notes, as well as many other third-party apps that support the Dynamic Type feature:

  1. Open the Settings app and tap Display & Brightness.
  2. Tap Text Size.
  3. “Apps that support Dynamic Type will adjust to your preferred reading size below,” reads the feature’s description. Drag the slider to the right to make the font size bigger or to the left to decrease it. You will see the size change above and can decide accordingly.
  4. You can place the slider in the center to reset system fonts to their default size.
Increase Text Size from iPhone Settings

Once you have adjusted the text size, open other apps, and you will notice the change. If it still shows small fonts, force quit and reopen the app or restart your iPhone.

If the app continues to show small text, that means this particular application does not support Dynamic Type. You can look for an in-app option to adjust text size, and if there is none, contact the app developer and request them to support Dynamic Type.

About Dynamic Type

Some iPhone apps give you the option to increase or decrease text size. But wouldn’t it be great if the user could choose their preferred text size once and trust the operating system to automatically switch fonts in apps as needed?

That’s exactly what the Dynamic Type feature is designed for!

Provided an app uses an adaptive layout, this super handy feature will automatically adjust tracking and leading for every system font size and text style to match your size preference.

Dynamic Type will even attempt to adapt user interfaces at large font sizes in order to make tapping buttons or accessing important functions within apps easier.

Apple’s first-party apps showcase examples of proper Dynamic Type support. In Apple News or App Store, for instance, making the text bigger increases the font size for body text while ensuring that things like the byline, category name, or price are not comically large.

Third-party apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter (X), Gmail, YouTube, and more also support Dynamic Type.

Dynamic Type isn’t just for native apps—even web developers can easily support this feature in HTML pages by using appropriate CSS font presets. Unless your favorite website supports Dynamic Type, it probably won’t automatically scale the text to match the selected font size.

To make the fonts even bigger than the above-mentioned slider allows, you’ll need to visit accessibility settings.

Make the font size even bigger on your iPhone or iPad

  1. Open the Settings app on your iOS device.
  2. Tap Accessibility > Display & Text Size.
  3. Select Larger Text.
  4. Switch on Larger Accessibility Sizes to reveal bigger font options.
  5. Now, drag the slider to select the font size you want.
Larger Accessibility Text Sizes on iPhone

iOS will attempt to adjust the user interface elements at large font sizes, but keep in mind that oversized fonts might make it difficult to tap buttons within apps.

Even if you have perfect 20/20 vision and have no use for Dynamic Type, chances are you’re an important tech support person to your friends and family. It is, therefore, a good idea to memorize this tip because your parents will likely prefer the bigger fonts.

Adjust text size on a per-app basis

If you do not want to increase the text size for most of the apps and system elements, you can set a desired text size separately for each of your installed apps.

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