How to Control Your iPhone with Your Eyes

It may sound like magic, but you can actually navigate, select, and interact with your iPhone using just your gaze. There is a feature named Eye Tracking in the Settings of your iPhone. Once you turn it on, an onscreen pointer will follow the movement of your eyes, and when you look at an item and hold your gaze steady, or dwell, an action, tap, by default, is performed.

Enable Eye Tracking on iPhone 

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone. 

2. Scroll down to find Accessibility, and tap the Eye Tracking to turn it on.  

3. There will be an onscreen instruction to calibrate Eye Tracking. As a dot appears in different locations around the screen, follow its movement with your eyes.

Besides, you can see there are several options on the Eye Tracking interface:

• Smoothing: Increase or decrease this value to make the movement of the pointer smoother or less responsive.
• Snap to Item: Have the Eye Tracking pointer automatically move to the item on the screen that’s closest to wherever you look. 
• Zoom on Keyboard Keys: When you dwell on the keyboard, zoom in on the section of the keyboard you’re looking at. Dwell again on a key to tap it.
• Auto-Hide: Turn it on, and the Eye Tracking pointer will show when you hold your gaze steady for the amount of time specified. The pointer automatically fades while your eyes are moving.
• Dwell Control: To adjust settings for Dwell Control, such as the default dwell action and the duration of the dwell time. To further customize Dwell Control, tap AssistiveTouch to bring up the AssistiveTouch menu.

Use Eye Tracking

After calibrating Eye Tracking, the iPhone will follow the movement of your eyes. By default, when you’re looking at an item on the screen, an outline appears around the item. Hold your gaze steadily on an icon, button, or toggle, and your iPhone registers a tap. 

You may need to use AssistiveTouch to perform more types of actions with Eye Tracking. To activate this, hold your gaze on the AssistiveTouch circle moving around the screen. After the menu appears, direct your eyes toward the icon for the action you want to perform. For instance, to return to the Home screen, hold your gaze on the Home icon.

If you want to stop using Eye Tracking, go back to Accessibility in Settings to turn off Eye Tracking. 

Conclusion:

Your iPhone is full of clever hidden features, like Eye Tracking, that often go unnoticed. You might not use all of them every day, but it's comforting to know they're there when you need them.