Find out why some photos zoom in automatically to fill the entire iPhone or iPad screen, and how you can stop this from happening.
While scrolling through videos on X (formerly Twitter), you may have noticed that tall vertical videos are slightly zoomed to take up the entire iPhone screen. You can pinch in slightly with two fingers to restore the original video size and see a bit of black bars on the top and bottom.
Along the same lines, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 add a new zoom to fill feature that slightly zooms a photo that’s already too tall and nearly the same aspect ratio as your device screen. The automatic zoom eliminates the small black bars or white gradient at the top and bottom to ensure a nice, full-screen experience when viewing tall pictures. This new setting is enabled by default.
However, if you’d rather view tall pictures in their original dimensions without automatic zooming in, follow the steps below to turn off automatic zoom for the Apple Photos app.
Stop tall pictures from zooming in automatically
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 (both are currently in beta).
- Tap Apps from the bottom.
- Select Photos from the list of applications.
- Tap View Options.
- Turn off Zoom Photos to Fill.
Now, force-quit and reopen the Photos app, and tall images that nearly match the screen’s aspect ratio will no longer zoom in automatically.
For example, this tall image of an Apple Pie takes up the entire screen on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, leaving no empty spaces. But after turning off Zoom Photos to Fill, the same image shows a white gradient at the top and bottom, and tapping on the screen to enter full-screen mode shows black borders.
Also, new in iOS 27: