Introduced in the latest developer beta of iOS 18, Vehicle Motion Cues reduces motion sickness while you’re reading on the go on your iPhone. Here’s how to turn it on.
Dots on the sides of the iPhone slide up and down as the phone moves
Originally announced for Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May 2024, the new iPhone feature Vehicle Motion Cues will become known as the great idea with dots. When your iPhone moves, optional dots move on the screen, and that’s all.
But it’s enough. If you’re prone to motion sickness, it’s usually made worse by reading a screen rather than looking out the window of the car or train.
The problem is the discrepancy between the stationary screen your eyes see and the physical movement of the vehicle your body and head feel. By placing moving dots on the screen, your eyes see the movement your body feels.
In theory, there are two very simple ways to turn the feature on or off. In practice, there seems to be a bug in the latest beta, so one of the ways doesn’t work yet.
No doubt this issue will be fixed before the official release, but once it’s working, the easiest way to enable the feature is through the settings.
How to enable vehicle motion alerts in iOS 18 settings
- Go to Settings, Accessibility on your iPhone
- Beat Movement
- To turn on Display vehicle movement signals
Note that while this setting does not enable vehicle motion alerts, it does disable the feature. This is one reason why this is a bug. On the other hand, there should be other options that are not yet shown in the settings.
We know this because the other way to turn on cues works very well and shows those options. And if you’re likely to want to turn the feature on and off frequently, that’s the better way too – once you’ve got it set up.
First you have to set it up in the Control Center, but then you can quickly turn on vehicle movement signals
How to use vehicle movement signals in the control center
- Open control center on your iPhone
- Either tap the plus sign at the top left or
- Press and hold any empty space
- Tap Add Control
- In the list displayed, scroll down to View on accessibility
- Tap to select vehicle motion signals.
This will add a button for the feature to Control Center. Now when you swipe down on your iPhone, it will appear and you can tap the Vehicle Motion Alerts button.
When you do this, you have three options:
It’s a shame that you can’t turn the feature on and off by simply tapping the icon, like you can with the flashlight, for example. But the central “Only in vehicle” option means you can automate the activation.
You have three guesses as to when that is.
It’s likely that this feature will work at least as well as the way the iPhone turns on Do Not Disturb when it thinks you’re driving. Just like then, it may take a while after you arrive for the Vehicle Motion Alerts feature to detect this and turn it off.
Although unlike Do Not Disturb, the Vehicle Motion Alerts feature is so intriguing that you might just leave it on all the time, it’s extremely clever how Apple has managed to create such a clear and eye-catching new visual feature without getting in the way of what you want to do on your iPhone.
