Handy iOS Trick Lets You Zoom Photos Closer

Written By Paul Monckton Forbes Contributor

Ever wanted to check small details in a photo, but found yourself frustrated when the iOS Photos app won’t let you zoom in quite much as you want? Well, Wayne Williams over at Betanews has discovered a handy trick which will let you zoom in just as much as you jolly well please.
The there’s no hidden ‘super-zoom’ feature within Photos, but this trick exploits a strange side-effect which occurs when you rotate an image in the app.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Launch the Photos app and select a photo to zoom into.
2. Tap Edit and then select the Crop tool.
3. Tap the Rotate button and rotate the photo by 90 degrees.
4. Tap Done to save the changes

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Having carried out these steps, you will now be able to zoom into the photo as far as you want, even beyond the individual pixel level, to where there is no more detail to be seen.

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Once you’ve edited your image in this way, the ‘super-zoom’ mode will stay active. Don’t worry about overwriting your original photo in step 4, as the changes can easily be reverted at which point the zooming function will go back to normal.

After using the trick, you can zoom in much closer – even closer than this if you want. (Image credit: Ellie Holland)

Unfortunately, you’ll have to repeat these steps every time you want to use the ‘super-zoom’ function on a new photo.
While the method is rather clumsy, it does get the job done. It also raises the question why Apple AAPL -0.52% decided not to let users zoom in further in the first place. There’s clearly no technical reason why it shouldn’t be possible.

The trick works as of iOS version 9.3.2 , but there’s no guarantee that a future update won’t break it. 

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