The motion-sickness cure hidden in iPhone settings

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260728-dancing-dots-the-motion-sickness-cure-hidden-in-your-iphone-settings

23•saikatsg•1h ago

Comments

fastaguy88•1h ago

Did I miss the part where you must be looking at your iPhone for it to work?

cschep•1h ago

> If looking at screens makes you car sick, you might want to try the iPhone dots. Or – stop me if this sounds crazy – you could just put your phone down and enjoy the ride.

Final paragraph of the article :)

jimt1234•51m ago

It's difficult to enjoy the ride with motion sickness. So yes, it does sound crazy, most likely written by someone who isn't affected by motion sickness.

stronglikedan•42m ago

It's not for general motion sickness. Most people only experience motion sickness when they're moving but their eyes aren't seeing any movement, such as looking down at a something. That type can be prevented by simply putting down the phone/book/whathaveyou, and looking out the window. I said prevented, not cured, because once it sets in, no amount of looking out the window will cure it.

freehorse•41m ago

My experience is that it helps with being able to look at screens, but not that it is better than not looking at screens while riding. I needed to occasionally leave the screen and close my eyes or look outside (depending position in the vehicle) for a bit to calm down. But otherwise I cannot look at screens on rides for more than a few minutes, so it is better in this sense.

So yeah, as somebody with (moderate) motion sickness, this advise resonates with me to some extent.

leetbulb•1h ago

I've been using this for a while now. It works very well while being a passenger in a car. Highly recommend enabling it if you experience car sickness.

Analemma_•56m ago

The first time I saw this I just took it as a given it would be a placebo, and I was rather astonished to find it actually helps quite a bit, my phone-induced motion sickness is reduced significantly with it on. If you're suspicious I'd encourage you to give it a try.

deepspace•55m ago

I have been using the feature for ages, and it really does work, but it is by no means 'hidden'. It's just an iOS feature.

heaney-555•39m ago

>but it is by no means 'hidden'

To the average user, any feature that is not enabled by default is effectively hidden. Most people do not dig deeply into the settings of their tech devices beyond aesthetic customization.

This is why defaults matter, a lot. Settings are for power users, defaults are for everyone else.

mpalczewski•31m ago

pretty sure it was on by default for me

Jtsummers•27m ago

On iOS, it's off by default (like many settings under "accessibility").

stranded22•51m ago

It didn’t work for my wife, so good to see she is the exception rather than the rule

kukanani•42m ago

Make that N=2, the one person I know who suffers from phone-induced motion sickness says that having this feature on makes the sickness worse.

stronglikedan•44m ago

This has been available on Android for years as various apps, but their limitation is that certain buttons become unavailable. Apparently, Android blocks certain "secure" buttons from being pressed when there is another app overlaying the screen.

Does anyone know if Apple's version has a similar limitation? I would presume not since it seems to be implemented at the OS level or at least closer to it.

release-object•37m ago

Your suspicion is correct, it does not.

aleksejs•22m ago

That limitation can be bypassed through the Accessibility API on Android. KineStop supports this, but for some reason does not advertise it particularly widely. You want KineStop → Settings → Fix blocked buttons.

shaky-carrousel•9m ago

There's an open source app: https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness

croisillon•38m ago

- yesterday, 110 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49077999

- 43 days ago, 272 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557530

jodacola•38m ago

Learned about this last month from HN [0].

Subsequently took a 10 hour car trip where my wife and daughter both reported this feature allowed them both to read their books and articles while I was driving, which was definitely not the case on any prior road trip. So, add +2 to whatever Ns you're tracking.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557530

ihumanable•14m ago

Told my spouse about this feature when I learned about this a while back too. They have terrible motion sickness to the point that just shooting a quick text was a gamble.

Since they put this setting on, they can happily use their phone with no motion sickness. So +1 to that N.

skipants•37m ago

This works really well for me but, when I get out of the car or off the subway, then I get a bit of vertigo. I’m really afraid that using the feature too much would make the vertigo worse so I stopped.

MaXtreeM•26m ago

Any ideas why I cannot find the settings on my wife's iPhone 12 mini? She has iOS 26. I wanted her to try it last week when we drove a lot to our vacation but did not find it anywhere in the Accessibility -> Motion settings.

embedding-shape•6m ago

Strange, I have a iPhone 12 Mini and can definitely see a "Vehicle Motion Cues" setting under the "Vision > Motion" part of Settings. Maybe it depends on the Region? I'm in Europe if that matters.

damienmeur•20m ago

I m on Iphone 13, and disabling animations really gave a second life to my iphone which was really struggling

namuol•6m ago

If they made glasses that did this I might buy them. I don’t need to look at my phone to get motion sickness, but if I do it’s almost guaranteed. It really depends on the driver, though.

Kimi K3-256k

Show HN: Open-source engine running Gemma 4 26B in 2 GB RAM on any M-series Mac

Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the Incident

Superlogical

Keychron announces first open-source firmware for gaming mice

KOReader

Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

The motion-sickness cure hidden in iPhone settings

Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)

Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents

Claude Is Down

PgDog (YC P25) Is Hiring

Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word

A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

Commodification of Intelligence: Good, Bad, and Ugly Circular AI Deals

Some thoughts about Anthropic's new cryptanalysis results

How much can you delegate to agents?

Aurora DSQL: Scalable, Multi-Region OLTP

Show HN: CheapFoodMap – A map of good meals under $10

Darktable

How to Not Die by a Thousand Cuts. Or, How to Think About Software Quality

The Rust on ESP Book

Hamburg's Stadtpark: A Park Built to Be Used

Self-hosting Kimi K3: 20% more hardware cost, 20% better task resolution

Launch HN: Tokenless (YC S26) – Automatic model switching to save money

Show HN: Qwen Scribe – local transcription and dictation for Apple Silicon

Shipping Godot VR and Porting to PSVR2: A Partial Post Mortem

Learning Musical Multitasking

GPT-5.6 vs. Claude Fable 5 for Physical AI, which performs best?

More Tailscale tricks for your jailbroken Kindle

Kimi K3-256k

Show HN: Open-source engine running Gemma 4 26B in 2 GB RAM on any M-series Mac

Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the Incident

Superlogical

Keychron announces first open-source firmware for gaming mice

KOReader

Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

The motion-sickness cure hidden in iPhone settings

Turning a Dumb AC Unit Smart (Without Losing My Security Deposit)

Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents

Claude Is Down

PgDog (YC P25) Is Hiring

Document-borne AI worms can self-propagate through Copilot for Word

A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands

Commodification of Intelligence: Good, Bad, and Ugly Circular AI Deals

Some thoughts about Anthropic's new cryptanalysis results

How much can you delegate to agents?

Aurora DSQL: Scalable, Multi-Region OLTP

Show HN: CheapFoodMap – A map of good meals under $10

Darktable

How to Not Die by a Thousand Cuts. Or, How to Think About Software Quality

The Rust on ESP Book

Hamburg's Stadtpark: A Park Built to Be Used

Self-hosting Kimi K3: 20% more hardware cost, 20% better task resolution

Launch HN: Tokenless (YC S26) – Automatic model switching to save money

Show HN: Qwen Scribe – local transcription and dictation for Apple Silicon

Shipping Godot VR and Porting to PSVR2: A Partial Post Mortem

Learning Musical Multitasking

GPT-5.6 vs. Claude Fable 5 for Physical AI, which performs best?

More Tailscale tricks for your jailbroken Kindle

The motion-sickness cure hidden in iPhone settings

Comments