Magnifier for small print
Point your phone's camera at small print, like a medicine box or a receipt. Zoom in, light it up, freeze the picture, make it high-contrast, and have it read aloud.
Start the camera, then hold the phone about 10 to 20 cm above the text.
Pinch, or use + and −, to zoom. Freeze the picture to hold it still, then pinch and drag to look around it. On a computer, scroll to zoom and drag to move.
Runs on your device: the camera picture and photos are never recorded, uploaded or saved. The camera turns off when you leave the page.
Read it aloud
The reader reads what is on screen and can mix up numbers and similar letters. For medicines, always check the dose and instructions with a pharmacist or doctor. This is a reading aid, not medical advice.
The words are found on your device. The first time, the page downloads the text reader (about 9 MB) from this site. Speech uses your device's own voices.
Getting a clear view
Rest your elbows on a table and hold the phone 10 to 20 cm from the text. When it looks sharp, freeze it: a still picture is far easier to read than a shaking one.
Small print is hardest in dim light. Use the light button where your phone allows it, or move to a window. Tilt shiny packets a little to stop glare.
High contrast turns grey text darker. White on black can be easier on glare-sensitive eyes. Try each: the best one differs from person to person.
Where the browser allows it, the camera's own zoom is used. Otherwise the picture is enlarged on screen, which gets soft past about ×4: move the phone a little closer instead.
Sources: W3C, MediaStream Image Capture (the camera “zoom” and “torch” settings a web page can request, where the browser supports them); W3C Community Group, Web Speech API (speechSynthesis, the device's own text-to-speech voices); Tesseract OCR (Apache License 2.0) run in the browser with tesseract.js (Apache 2.0) and its Arabic and English trained data; American Optometric Association, “Adult Vision: 41 to 60 Years of Age” (from the early to mid-40s many adults start having trouble seeing clearly up close, and small print blurs more in dim light). Licences: tesseract.js, Tesseract, notices. Not medical advice: if reading up close is getting hard, have your eyes checked.