With iOS 18, Apple has introduced several new accessibility features. Among them, there is one that will delight those of us who tend to read or play on the iPhone or iPad (here are 7 free games to enjoy this summer for adults and children) when we are passengers in a car: the Vehicle Motion Indicators. This tool, designed to reduce nausea and discomfort during a car ride, is extremely useful. Let’s see what it is and how it works.
iOS 18 Vehicle Motion Indicators: how it works
Getting carsick is often caused by a sensory conflict: what we see with our eyes and what we physically feel do not match. And this is exactly what happens when we are focused on looking at a screen while the car (and we) are moving.
To avoid this discomfort, which can lead to real nausea and unease, iOS 18 includes the Vehicle Motion Indicators. These show, in real time, small dots along the edges of the screen that move in sync with the motion of the car.
These dots move subtly, without interfering with what we are watching or reading, but they greatly help synchronize what our eyes perceive with what our body feels.
How to activate Vehicle Motion Indicators in iOS 18
We can set this new feature to always stay on, so that the dots are visible at all times, or to only appear when motion is detected. In the latter case, thanks to the iPhone and iPad’s built-in sensors, the system detects if we are in a moving vehicle and automatically activates the dots during the ride.
To enable them from Settings, simply follow these steps:
- Open Settings on our iPhone or iPad.
- Go to Accessibility.
- Tap Motion.
- Select Show Vehicle Motion Indicators.
- Choose between On or Automatic.
For quick access, we can also add the corresponding button to the Control Center. We just need to open Control Center, go into customization mode, find the option under the “Vision accessibility controls” section and add it. From there, if we prefer, we can toggle it on or off instantly.
Fortunately, not all of us react the same way to this sensory mismatch, but for many people this feature can mean the difference between enjoying an entertaining trip or spending almost the entire ride feeling unwell. Moreover, Apple’s approach to achieving this is discreet, barely distracting, and adapts to whatever we are doing on the screen. So, if we have ever had to stop reading a message or looking at a map (this button changes a lot about how we use Apple Maps) in the middle of a journey because we started feeling queasy, we now have the solution.
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