Bug in iOS Allows for Unlimited Zooming in Photos App - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Bug in iOS Allows for Unlimited Zooming in Photos App

by

The Photos app for iOS allows users to zoom into images using pinch gestures, but the zooming capabilities are limited and don't let users to zoom all the way in to a photo. There is, however, a bug in iOS that allows zooming beyond the current limit, shared this morning by iDownloadBlog.

In the iOS Photos app, opening a photo and then using the "Edit" feature and the "Crop" tool to rotate the photo by 90 degrees appears to remove the zooming limit. After rotating the photo sideways, a second edit can be done to rotate it back to the correct angle, leaving the bug intact and allowing for further zooming.

ioszoomcapabilities

Max normal zoom in Photos on left, extra zoom through Photos bug on right

Unlimited zooming is only available on a photo that's been rotated through the Crop tool, and exiting the Photos app or switching over to another image resets the photo so the zoom bug no longer works. A video demonstration is below.


Zooming in beyond the current thresholds in the Photos app is of little practical use in most cases, because the image becomes extremely pixellated, but it could be useful to people who want to zoom into a specific area of an photo just a bit further.

The zooming bug works on iPads and iPhones running iOS 9.3.2 and the iOS 9.3.3 beta. It is not clear when it will be fixed as it's likely a bug that's not a main priority.

Top Rated Comments

JonneyGee Avatar
134 months ago
This "bug" sounds more like a feature to me.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sputnikv Avatar
134 months ago
i've never understood on being limited to zoom into my own pictures. often times i'll resort to taking screenshots of an image zoomed in, and zooming into that
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
134 months ago
This guy uses my app. Awesome :D
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
b11051973 Avatar
134 months ago
Why is there a limit on the zoom in the first place. It always drives me nuts when I can't zoom in as far as I want to.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
autrefois Avatar
134 months ago
This is a very useful bug :cool:
I sometimes think bugs like this are left in there on purpose by a programmer who disagrees with a decision to leave out/limit a feature in some way. Seems easy enough to do once you know how, but not readily discoverable so that it's not caught before being released.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
134 months ago
As someone that frequently works with graphics at the pixel level, this is a feature that has been missing from iOS since iPhone OS 1.0 (except for couple bugs along the way, similar to this one). For most people, zooming in further would merely be a nice feature for certain photos. But for designers and people that work with graphics in general, it would be amazing.

I literally use Universal Access's Accessibility's zoom feature at least once every day. I have the pixel smoothing turned off, because I like to look at the pixels for one reason or another. Sometimes it's just to see how a certain program has chosen to do sub-pixel smoothing. Sometimes it's to study something more useful that would otherwise be impossible.

What I don't get is why Apple has the zoom level limited in the first place.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 27 Next to iPhone

Here's When iOS 27 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: It's Out]

Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
iOS 27 Icon iPhone

iOS 27 Available Now With These 8 New Features

Monday September 14, 2026 9:00 am PDT by
Update — 10 a.m. Pacific Time: Apple has released iOS 27. During its iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event last week, Apple announced that iOS 27 will be released widely on Monday, September 14. iOS 27 should be available around 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time today via the Settings app, under General → Software Update. Below, we have highlighted eight new features and...
Apple iCloud Plus expansion hero

iCloud+ Now Includes Apple TV, Apple Arcade, and Curated Apple Music Stations in Over 100 Countries

Tuesday September 15, 2026 1:43 am PDT by
Apple today announced a new subscription initiative that turns paid iCloud+ subscriptions into a broader services bundle in more than 100 countries. In select countries, Apple says every paid iCloud+ plan, including the cheapest 50GB tier, now includes Apple TV and Apple Arcade "at no additional cost," while family sharing extends the storage, TV and Arcade access to up to five people....