Without a doubt, one of the most impressive and yet hidden features in iOS 18 is the new eye tracking mode under accessibility options. This takes a cue from The Vision Pro and other similar devices in that you can actually navigate your device, whether that’s an iPhone or an iPad, using just your eyes. By looking at different parts of the screen, you may see a little grey dot on my iPhone screen right now, and it’s moving around between the different apps. That’s being controlled using just my eyesight. I’m not touching the device in any way.

So to enable this feature, we’re going to go into the Settings app and then we’re going to go for Accessibility. From here, we’re going to scroll down a little bit to find Physical and Motor, and then you’ll find the eye tracking options under here. Now, before I turn this feature on, I’m going to enable the toggle that says Dwell Control at the bottom of this screen. What that means is that if you keep your eyes pointed at the same thing for long enough, that button will activate. So if you look at the back button for more than a couple of seconds, that button will press without you having to touch your device at all.
The next thing to do is to make sure your iPhone is perfectly still, so perhaps it’s propped up against something or it’s on its stand, and then we’re going to turn the eye tracking control on. This will guide us for a short calibration process. Using just your eyes from now on, we’re not going to touch the device at all. Simply follow the dots on the screen using your eyes, try not to move your head too much, and your phone will learn where your eyes are looking using the sensors on the front of your device.
As I go through this process, you’ll see that little coloured dot moves all around the screen, and I’m just simply changing my directional sight to make sure I’m looking at the dot each time. Obviously, I’m not doing it in real time while I’m talking to you because I’m looking at you, not the phone.
When that process is finished, you’re then going to see that little grey dot that you saw in the teaser earlier, and as I look around the screen, that grey dot will follow my eyes. And because we enabled Dwell Control, if I look at the back button in the top left corner and just hold my gaze there for a moment, that button will activate, and it will move back for me. And I can navigate my entire iPhone like this.

I can go on a different menu in Settings by looking at it, holding my gaze for a moment, and it will open. We’ve also got that floating assistive access button. That’s the grey circle on the screen there. If I look at that and hold my gaze, I then get some other device controls such as ‘Return to the home screen’, and just like that, I’m now able to go back to my home screen and interact with anything on my device.

I’m going to open up the Music app. We’re going to go to that now playing song, and we’re just going to play it just by using eyesight. I can’t stress enough, I’m not touching my device at all and just looking and thinking about what I want it to do. It genuinely feels like magic to use a device like this, and it just makes me think about how useful this will be for people all around the world.

It’s incredible. It does take a few minutes to get used to this new way of using your device, and it’s not going to be for everyone all of the time. It’s an accessibility feature that’s designed for a certain group of people but available to everyone should they want to explore. I’ve used it on my iPad in the kitchen while I was doing cooking recently, and I’ve managed to go through the next steps of my recipe without getting my messy hands all over the screen.

And this is just one of many, many new features in iOS 18 that kind of go under the radar slightly. I’ve spent the whole summer playing with iOS 18 and learning all of the cool new things that you can do, just like this eye tracking. If you want to learn what else is new, please do check out my channel where there are hundreds of QuickTips videos to help you make the most of your device. Or if you want to read the book that I’ve written this year called ‘100 QuickTips for iOS 18’, I encourage you to check that out at the link below. I’ll see you next time.