1. I am a devolver and I (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear is telling you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took over a decade and a half to come up with the idea.
There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago, where I discovered KineStop which is an app that does the same on Android. I've only tried it a few times but it has worked every time.
Worth checking first whether your phone already has this natively. My one year old Android by Honor has it built in and exposed in the quick settings (sliding the right down). I know a couple others also have it, but not all of them as discoverable
It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
Honor phones have this in the quick settings (the thing that opens when you slide the right side of the top bar down), labeled "Motion Sickness". Felt well-explained and discoverable.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
I tried this and it did nothing for me. For a start, the white dots disappear on a white background, so not a good start. The main thing, though, is while it picked up on the vehicle turning it didn't pick up on acceleration much, which is what actually gives me motion sickness.
The biggest issue Android has both with Kinestop amd this app is unlike Apple's system it does not count for acceleration. I find myself having to look ahead when under acceleration or braking. I have experienced the Apple's motion cues when my friend got curious if it would work because he had no use for it since he did not have motion sickness and I'm unsure if it was just psychological but it felt better than Kinestop which I use.
I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!
Were a lot of people rawdogging their Thinkpads while driving back in the day? Plugged into an inverter into the cigarette lighter to trickle charge? :-)
Passengers already existed back then, which this intended for.
The motion cues are not meant to decrease motion sickness for a driver doom scrolling on their phone while operating their vehicle.
This has been reposted here several times in the last few weeks, but it is a very neat feature. I find myself getting quite motion sick on the bus if I look at my phone, but these dots help me at least check messages here and there without immediately feeling like I'm going to throw up.
Bit of a niche, but I use inverted colors and the camera app to find ticks on my dog. Enabled by triple-clicking the lock button under Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Classic invert
Not technically "Accessibility" but Android has a "developer" setting called "Show Touches" which puts little dots on screen when you touch it.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
Under "Display & Text Size": "on/off labels" and "increase contrast". "Reduce transparency" is a bit of a mixed bag but is worth trying out.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
I love the background sounds feature. You can add a shortcut in the control center to turn it on and off. I used it a ton when I lived in an apartment with particularly noisy neighbors
As for Reduce Transparency, next iOS version has a proper slider to adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass - worth playing with for anyone on the beta
One of the best and most clever "hidden" features. Very Apple.
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.
1. I am a devolver and I (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear is telling you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took over a decade and a half to come up with the idea.
Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.
This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...
I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
And yet, apparently it was.
It's not perfect, but the dots help me to go from instantly feeling sick to lasting 30-40 minutes before I have to stop looking at the screen.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
Similarly, on MacOS I use the Zoom feature (Command Key + mouse scroll) to pixel peep when doing graphical work.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
Do you think everyone gets motion sickness?
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.