By Lydia | Last Updated
As animations can greatly enhance the visual experience on iPhones and iPads, too many of them can also be overwhelming, especially for some people with motion sensitivity. Thus, in this tutorial, I’ll show you how to turn on Reduce Motion on your iPhone or iPad with iOS 17/18. Steps will be illustrated as below.
Apple Reduce Motion is an accessibility feature on iPhone/iPad that can minimize or disable certain effects and animations within the operating system.
It’s designed to aid those who’re sensitive with screen motion, as it can limit visual motion in iOS device interface with the motion sensor on iPhone.
When Reduce Motion is ON, it will reduce the motion effect of screen transitions and parallax effects on the Home screen, and animation effects in some certain app.
Besides, when you open or close apps, the transition animations will be replaced by Fade-in and Fade-out Effect instead of Pop-up effect.
The steps to enable iPhone/iPad Reduce Motion is straightforward. Just follow these steps:
Step 1: Unlock your iPhone or iPad and open the Settings app from Home screen.
Step 2: Scroll down and locate to the option of Accessibility.
Step 3: Then tap on Motion, and locate the Reduce Motion option.
Step 4: Toggle the Reduce Motion switch to ON position. You can also enable Prefer Cross-Face Transitions if necessary.
Step 5: No need to restart, to confirm the changes, just go back to your Home screen and switch between apps to observe the reduced animations.
Along with Reduce Motion, iOS 17/18 offers other accessibility options related to motion:
In addition to Reduce Motion, you can also stop animated images, video previews, and full-screen messages effects from playing automatically.
Steps: To disable this feature, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion, and toggle off these three options.
This feature, firstly introduced in iOS/iPadOS 18, displays animated dots at the edges of the screen to represent changes in vehicle motion. It’s particularly helpful for reducing motion sickness on iPhone/iPad.
Steps: Go to iPhone/iPad Settings > Accessibility > Motion, tap on Show Vehicle Motions Cues, you can set it to On, Automatic or Off.
You can also access this feature in control panel, tap on the car icon, select the settings as needed.
Q1: When should I enable Reduce Motion on my iPhone or iPad?
Enable it when you feel dizzy with motion effects, or if you prefer a simpler interface without extra motion effects.
Reduce Motion in iPhone benefits other aspect too, like it can also improve performance on older devices by reducing the graphical load. Besides, Reduce Motion on iPhone can save battery to some extent.
Q2: Can I still use Live Photos and animated wallpapers with Reduce Motion on?
Yes! Reduce Motion only affects system animations like app transitions. It doesn’t impact Live Photos or other dynamic wallpapers that you’ve set on your device.
Q3: What to do if Reduce Motion iPhone Not Working?
Firstly, double-check that Reduce Motion setting is enabled. Then try restarting your iPhone, and also ensure that your device is running the latest version of iOS.
