The second Android 13 Developer Preview has been available for a few days and keeps providing new information about future functions, some of which can already be tried out. This includes an accessibility improvement that makes Magnifier much more useful: it can follow the cursor when entering text.
Android has lots of accessibility features, making it possible to use smartphones as flexibly as possible in all situations. These functions include the screen magnifier, which is available in this form in almost every operating system and can enlarge part of the display on the screen by several factors – just like the classic magnifier does. Normally, this virtual magnifying glass itself is moved freely over the display, but this can be very tedious in combination with the text input.
Recorded this video to show off the new Accessibility magnifier feature that follows the text as you type. pic.twitter.com/UmNDaZ26Lz
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 17, 2022
With Android 13, an improvement is to be introduced with which the screen magnifier automatically follows the cursor. This means that you can always see the last typed characters in the magnifying glass. You can see this in the video above, but still in a very error-prone variant. Although the magnifying glass follows the cursor, there is such a strong delay that it no longer really makes sense. But it’s just a developer preview and a lot can and will happen before the final version.
It can be assumed that Google’s developers will also bring improvements in other areas of accessibility. So far, however, no innovations have been spotted apart from the functions that have already been announced or rolled out.