If you’re like me, you probably loved the magnifier tool in iPhone’s screenshot editor. You’d snap a screenshot, tap Edit, and then drop a little zoom bubble over the fine print or something important—perfect for contracts, receipts, or those sneaky hard-to-read serial numbers.
Then one day, it was just… gone.
When I updated my iPhone to iOS 17, I opened a screenshot to annotate and realized the magnifier tool was no longer in the markup menu.
I thought I was losing my mind. I scrolled through the tools about five times, thinking, did I just forget where it was? But no—Apple quietly removed it. There was no announcement, no explanation, just poof.
So I did what any longtime Apple nerd does: I looked for a workaround. And after a bit of tinkering, I found one. It’s clunky, yes, but it works—and it’s saved me a bunch of times.
Here’s the trick: instead of editing your screenshot directly in the Photos app or the preview thumbnail, open the image inside the Books app. Yes, Apple Books.
Here’s how:
- Share the screenshot with the Books app and open it there.
- Tap the pencil icon at the top and then the + button at the bottom right, and you’ll see the built-in magnifier still present in that toolset. It feels like a secret passage Apple forgot to lock.
I know it sounds ridiculous. Who wants to jump through hoops just to zoom in on something?
But if you frequently send screenshots with small text or visual details, this workaround will do until Apple (hopefully) brings back the original feature.
Give it a try. It’s not elegant, but it works, and sometimes that’s enough.
Thank you for your tenacity.
I too was extremely unhappy that Apple removed the tool…I used it to zoom in on tiny imperfections on used items I sell online.
Perfect work around.
You are a genius :)!
Thank you again for your most useful share.