How to Enable and Use Vehicle Motion Signals on Your iPhone

iOS 18 doesn’t just bring flashy customizations to iPhones, but the update also adds new accessibility features that might prove more useful for some users. One of them is Vehicle Motion Cues that reduces motion sickness while using the iPhone or iPad in a moving vehicle. Here’s a guide on how you can enable and use this feature on your iPhone.

Why do we get motion sickness?

If you are the type of person who likes to scroll through the screen of your smartphone or read an e-book while traveling in a car, whether by train or by car, you may sometimes feel dizzy. And that’s probably because you suffer from motion sickness.

As one study explains, motion sickness is caused by conflicting sensory signals (sight, hearing, and body) being received by your brain. This happens especially when you are focusing on your screen and the vehicle you are in is moving at a different speed and direction.

The good news is that you can avoid this problem by stopping looking at your phone. But of course, you’ll miss out on those precious social media updates. Thanks to Apple, it’s now possible to use your iPhone or iPad while riding a ride.

What are vehicle motion signals?

Among the new accessibility features added in iOS 18 are vehicle motion cues. These are already available in the iOS 18 beta and will also be available to the public later this fall.

In fact, this feature uses animated dots placed on the edges of your phone’s screen. These dots will also start moving according to the movement and direction of the vehicle, giving you the right clues on your phone or tablet. Thus, your brain will start interpreting that what you see and feel corresponds to the same movement.

How to Enable and Use Vehicle Motion Signals on Your iPhone

If your iPhone is running iOS 18 Beta, vehicle motion signals are already available. However, they are disabled by default, so you need to enable them from Settings. Fortunately, accessing them is very simple. Here’s how to do it.

  1. Open Settings on your iPhone.
  2. Go to Accessibility and select Movement.
  3. Choose Vehicle movement indices.
  4. Toggle it to turn it on.
  5. Exit to save changes.

Auto-detection will also be enabled if you have enabled the feature. Similarly, you can disable it if you don’t want the detection to work instantly.

Access vehicle movement signals from the control center

Once you’ve enabled vehicle motion signals, there’s an easier way to access it from Control Center. Follow the steps to enable the feature from Quick Settings.

  1. Swipe down from the top of your screen.
  2. Go to the favorite page.
  3. Press the Vehicle movement indices button to turn it on or off.

You can also customize and rearrange the shortcuts found in your Control Center, including vehicle motion signals.

Which iPhone and iPad models have vehicle movement indications?

Vehicles Motion Cues is coming to iOS 18, which means that iPhone and iPad models that are compatible with the update should get the feature, including the iPhone XS and iPhone XR up to the iPhone 15. For iPad tablets, iPadOS 18 is expected to hit the iPad 7 and newer, iPad Air 3 and later, and iPad Mini 5 and later, among others.

Do you have any other tips to reduce motion sickness outside of this feature? We look forward to hearing your suggestions in the comments section.

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