I held my phone a little farther from my face the other day, the way you do when the words are just a touch too small. Then I caught myself doing it. Arm halfway across the kitchen, squinting at a text from my daughter like it was written in code.
I had been doing that for years. Years. And the whole time, there was a setting sitting right there that would have made the words bigger. I just never went looking for it.
So let me save you the squinting. This is one of the few phone tips that really is as simple as it sounds. No app to download. No account to set up. Just a slider you drag once, and then you forget you ever did it.
If you have an iPhone:
Open Settings. The gray gear.
Tap Display & Brightness.
Tap Text Size.
Drag the slider to the right until the sample words look comfortable.
That is it. Back out, and the whole phone is easier to read.
If you have an Android phone, it is much the same, though the wording shifts a little from phone to phone:
Open Settings.
Look for Display.
Find Font size, and drag it up.
If you do not see Font size right away, type “font” into the search box at the top of Settings and it will take you straight there.
Your texts get bigger. Your emails get bigger. Most of what you read on the phone gets bigger, all at once. And if you push the slider too far and it looks a little silly, you just drag it back. Nothing breaks. You are not going to hurt anything.
Here is the part I want you to hear. A lot of us figure the small print is just how phones are. It is not. The phone came set up for someone with younger eyes than mine, and probably yours. You are allowed to change it.
Go fix it now, before you forget. Then text someone and read their reply without holding the phone across the room.
If this is your kind of thing, I write three of these a week over at the newsletter. No pressure. Just a few plain tips for getting comfortable with all of this.
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