Make Your iPhone Easier to Use When You Need It, and Harder When You Don’t

Make Your iPhone Easier to Use When You Need It, and Harder When You Don’t

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-to-use-iphone-accessibility-shortcuts/

Publish Date: 2026-03-24 07:17:00

Source Domain: www.cnet.com

I used to avoid looking at my phone while I was in a moving car, because reading would give me motion sickness. 

That changed when I learned about the Vehicle Motion Cues feature on my iPhone — when it’s enabled, animated dots appear on my screen and follow the movements of the car, which tricks my brain into forgetting to make me nauseous.   

One great thing about this feature is that I don’t have to go hunting for it in my iOS settings when I need it. I don’t even have to look at my screen, because I’ve set it up as my iPhone’s Accessibility Shortcut.

iOS Accessibility Shortcuts let you quickly turn on useful features like Vehicle Motion Cues, AssistiveTouch, Live Captions and more. Set it up once, and you’ll have another physical shortcut for your iPhone like the Action Button or Back Tap.

How to set up an iPhone Accessibility Shortcut

You have a pretty wide range of options for your Accessibility Shortcut. Go to Settings Accessibility Accessibility Shortcut to make a selection:

• AssistiveTouch

• Background Sounds

• Classic Invert

• Color Filters

• Control Nearby Devices

• Dim Flashing Lights

• Eye Tracking

• Full Keyboard Access

• Hover Text

• Hover Typing

• Increase Contrast

• Left/Right Balance

• Live Captions

• Live Recognition

• Live Speech

• Magnifier

• Music Haptics

• Name Recognition

• Reduce Motion

• Reduce Transparency

• Reduce White Point

• Smart Invert

• Speak Screen

• Switch Control

• Vehicle Motion Cues

• Voice Control

• VoiceOver

• Zoom

Once you’ve chosen your Accessibility Shortcut, you can activate it by triple-clicking the side button (or the home button, if you’re using an older iPhone).

Some of these features can be permanently enabled on your device (for instance, I prefer more minimal animations, so I always have Reduce Motion turned on). But other features, like Vehicle Motion Cues or Color Filters, are only useful in limited scenarios, so the quick toggle is extremely handy.

You can also choose multiple options from the Accessibility Shortcuts list. When you triple-click the side or home button, you’ll see those…

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