Ways of enlarging emoji in Messages

[Simon]

I was hoping iOS 18 iMessage would offer some way to enlarge posts. When people post just a single emoji it’s quite large and easily legible, but if they embed them in text it’s often really hard to make out what it actually is. Double tapping doesn’t allow enlarging it and AFACT there’s no long press for loupe or something like that. I was hoping that might come as a little improvement in iOS 18. But apparently not.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

Settings / Accessibility / Zoom. Then you can double-tap three fingers to zoom in (and then out), pan with three fingers on the screen while zoomed.

[Dafuki]

@Simon

I was hoping iOS 18 iMessage would offer some way to enlarge posts. When people post just a single emoji it’s quite large and easily legible, but if they embed them in text it’s often really hard to make out what it actually is.

This! It drives me crazy! Well, several things drive me crazy

1. The original, default size for emoji was way, way too small. They haven’t changed it but they have bowed to pressure in IOS messages and email where if you put up to 3 emoji on a line by themselves (why just 3!?) they double or triple in size. They’ve done that, too, in OSX messages but not email. Is it in Sequoia?
2. Why on earth don’t they have a preference in Messages on both MacOS and IOS for text size? Yes, on Mac you can use assistive zoom (which I use all the time. Try it you’ll like it.) but why not a simple preference?

Dave

[Simon]

@Dafuki

Why on earth don’t they have a preference in Messages on both MacOS and IOS for text size? Yes, on Mac you can use assistive zoom (which I use all the time. Try it you’ll like it.) but why not a simple preference?

There is a simple workaround if you just want to enlarge all text on iOS Messages.

In Settings > Control Center, add the widget Text Size. Then switch to Messages and invoke that widget from CC. Make sure at the bottom to choose Messages Only and then move the dial further up. That will increase all text size within Messages.

My issue is that my Messages test size is fine the way it is for me, except for teeny tiny emoji. How hard would it be to implement a double-tap to enlarge or a long press to get a loupe view? Really Apple. Usability/accessibility and all.

[Dafuki]

@Simon

My issue is that my Messages test size is fine the way it is for me, except for teeny tiny emoji. How hard would it be to implement a double-tap to enlarge or a long press to get a loupe view?

Um, how hard would it be to increase the default size of emoji in all text so you can see what the hell they’re smiling about?

Dave

[Dafuki]

@jzw

That wouldn’t work because the emoji would then be too large compared to non-emoji characters. Line spacing would be messed up and the text flow would generally look bad.

Tee hee! They already drop the baseline of the emoji line 2 or 3 points so why not accept the ugliness and increase the emoji size so they are more readable?

It’s an insuperable problem, really, unless you use a full page layout program to manually size & center the emoji.

Ah well.

Dave

[jajvj1 (Jeffrey Jones)]

When I can’t make out an emoji, I use Text-to-Speech (Edit > Speech > Start Speaking or Option-Esc). The “voice” speaks the name of the emoji.

However, that doesn’t work on TidBITS Talk. Something (Discourse?) substitutes images for the actual emoji character.

[jesse_the_k]

HUZZAH! My #1 favorite iOS feature (text size in control center) has come to macOS!

(Now to resist upgrading until 18.1) (zipper-mouth-face)