Traveling has always been a bit of a nightmare for me. Thanks to motion sickness, my childhood trips always began with a ceremonial loading of the car with plastic bags, water and paper towels, and continued as stop-start operations, so that my parents were repeatedly and frantically heading to parking areas so I could run. outside and throw up in a hedge.
There is no end to the exotic and remote places I’ve tried to find a trash can for a sick bag.
As an adult, things got better. Boats are still a gamble, but I can usually get there by car, plane, or train. But that’s only if I stay perfectly still and don’t try to read, which makes work travel difficult and full of unnecessary downtime.
That’s why Vehicle Motion Cues, a new accessibility feature coming to iOS 18, could change my life – and not just for me. About a third of the population is susceptible to motion sickness, making it difficult to read or perform other tasks while on the move.
Vehicle motion signals should allow a passenger in a moving vehicle to look at their iPhone or iPad without feeling uncomfortable.
The feature adds animated dots to the sides of the phone’s screen that correspond to changes in motion in real time, to help minimize the sensory conflict you experience when reading in a moving vehicle. This should have the same calming effect on motion sickness as looking out the window while traveling.
The device’s sensors can recognize when you are in a moving vehicle to automatically activate it.
The Vehicle Motion Cues feature was not announced at WWDC on June 10, nor were the high-end features of iOS 18. In fact, Apple announced it in mid-May, alongside a a number of other accessibility features, including eye tracking and music haptics.
I missed it at the time – too distracted to figure out how to stop Apple Intelligence from sending me emails written as poems – but now it’s my most anticipated feature.
iOS 18 launches in the fall with iPhone 16. Find out what new features you’ll get in the update and which iPhones will support it.
Another little-known feature that isn’t designed for travel per se, but could help in that regard is eye tracking. This uses the front camera and lets you navigate your iPhone or iPad with just your eyes, including buttons, swipes, and gestures.
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