Those suffering from impaired vision may find it more challenging to read web pages in the Safari web browser on the iPhone and iPad. While pinch to zoom offers a viable short-term solution, it doesn’t necessarily make reading websites with tiny text any less cumbersome because users would still need to pan and scroll around on the website to keep zoomed text in sight while reading.
SafariReader is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer ljinc that sets out to offer a more ideal solution to the aforementioned qualm. It does so by empowering the user to adjust the website’s text zoom level with nothing more than a double-tap.
As depicted in the before and after screenshot examples above, the tweak can make a website’s text a lot more legible, especially if some users find that the text is too small to see at first glance. Additionally, users may use the double-tap gesture over and over again until satisfied with the zoom level, as there doesn’t appear to be a zoom limit of any kind.
One thing worth noting is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to revert back to the original zoom level without re-loading the web page. We find this to be somewhat frustrating, as it would be ideal to have the option to zoom back out with another gesture of some kind. On the other hand, the ends justify the means, as the tweak easily defeats the small text size issue for websites that some might find difficult to read.
While true that iOS offers text size options in the Accessibility section of the Settings app, these settings apply to every app and may not be ideal for 24/7 use. With SafariReader, users can invoke larger text on demand directly in the Safari app and revert back to default much more readily without the need to navigate the Settings app.
SafariReader doesn’t come with any options to configure, and anyone interested in giving the tweak a try may download it for free from the BigBoss repository via their favorite package manager. SafariReader supports jailbroken iOS 9, 10, 11, 12,13, and 14 devices and is only intended for the Safari web browser.
Do you plan to use SafariReader to augment your website consumption experience? Let us know in the comments section down below.