These are the type of problems that are completely invisible to someone who doesn't experience it. I wouldn't have even known it was a problem to solve.
A few years back we played an escape room game online with the whole team. One of the clues was in one of my colleagues "room". All he had to do was read it. "Come one read it man, we can win this." He froze. We all insisted he reads it. He could not read it. We thought he had an internet connection issue. Somehow we managed to escape the room and kept going.
The next day he told me he was embarrassed because he couldn't understand what we were talking about. He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.
1. Be a developer and you (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear indicates you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took a decade and a half to come up with it.
And this is exactly how things in large corporations don't happen. Things in large corporations who pay so well that nobody makes it through the recruitment filters and competition who's more than 2% off from being a pure assessment metrics maximiser. In my mind, chasing an idea like this just does not match the type.
Why it isn't likely to have happened before: trying is only easy for a developer who is not only very familiar with the API for reading those motion sensors but also with the API for system wide overlay. This a strict no for your run of the mill to-do list app. Combine that with the requirement of being affected themselves (or someone close), having the idea, having the time to try and no competing side quests that take up all attention. And the requirement of when the experiment was successful, having the kind of access that actually serves as a conduit for ideas not only on paper to someone in the position to make it a product. That's a lot of stars that need to align. Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle: would still need someone in the know to try it, but chances are that knowledge combined with a bit of prompting could be a path to PoC implementation that could clear effort thresholds that would stand in the way of conventional coding.
There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago, where I discovered KineStop which is an app that does the same on Android. I've only tried it a few times but it has worked every time.
Motion sickness person here. iPhone’s stock one doesn’t work for me. Haven’t tried that on Android. Will see if something similar is available on iOS as third party app.
I use KineStop and it works better than Apple's version on iOS did for me. Hopefully AOSP implements one because you do have to give KineStop rather invasive permissions.
Worth checking first whether your phone already has this natively. My one year old Android by Honor has it built in and exposed in the quick settings (sliding the right down). I know a couple others also have it, but not all of them as discoverable
It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
> I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected
Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.
Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.
I wish this worked a little better. It doesn't solve motion sickness for me when looking at my phone in a car, but it does seem to make it a little less severe.
I tried this and it did nothing for me. For a start, the white dots disappear on a white background, so not a good start. The main thing, though, is while it picked up on the vehicle turning it didn't pick up on acceleration much, which is what actually gives me motion sickness.
The biggest issue Android has both with Kinestop amd this app is unlike Apple's system it does not count for acceleration. I find myself having to look ahead when under acceleration or braking. I have experienced the Apple's motion cues when my friend got curious if it would work because he had no use for it since he did not have motion sickness and I'm unsure if it was just psychological but it felt better than Kinestop which I use.
My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
Honor phones have this in the quick settings (the thing that opens when you slide the right side of the top bar down), labeled "Motion Sickness". Felt well-explained and discoverable.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
On Vivo it's called "Motion Cues". Subtitle: "Dots shift forwards and backwards during acceleration and deceleration". And then it says in tiny font it's for motion sickness, I guess I didn't read that far last time.
I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
I think two accelerometers would do it at different ends of the phone. Normal hand-based motion will rarely include a sustained exact acceleration in one direction on both of these at the same time e.
I would assume the acceleration pattern of being in a vehicle is somewhat distinct.
I'd be curious what happens when you are in a vehicle that drives completely steady (no turns/acceleration/deceleration) - would it eventually turn off? I guess you wouldn't get motion sick in that case either way.
This has been reposted here several times in the last few weeks, but it is a very neat feature. I find myself getting quite motion sick on the bus if I look at my phone, but these dots help me at least check messages here and there without immediately feeling like I'm going to throw up.
This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!
Were a lot of people rawdogging their Thinkpads while driving back in the day? Plugged into an inverter into the cigarette lighter to trickle charge? :-)
Passengers already existed back then, which this intended for.
The motion cues are not meant to decrease motion sickness for a driver doom scrolling on their phone while operating their vehicle.
It absolutely is working on a ship. At least for me it helps e.g. when traveling on a big ferry etc. but I guess everybody has a different level of tolerance.
Interested because this autumn will board a ferry for an overnight journey. Sometimes I did suffer seasickness and have read taking medication when onboard already is too late. So I am happy to know there may be a potential solution available. Just in case. Thanks.
Not technically "Accessibility" but Android has a "developer" setting called "Show Touches" which puts little dots on screen when you touch it.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
Under "Display & Text Size": "on/off labels" and "increase contrast". "Reduce transparency" is a bit of a mixed bag but is worth trying out.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
I love the background sounds feature. You can add a shortcut in the control center to turn it on and off. I used it a ton when I lived in an apartment with particularly noisy neighbors
As for Reduce Transparency, next iOS version has a proper slider to adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass - worth playing with for anyone on the beta
Bit of a niche, but I use inverted colors and the camera app to find ticks on my dog. Enabled by triple-clicking the lock button under Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Classic invert
One of the best and most clever "hidden" features. Very Apple.
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.
Wonder if Tesla should add something like this to rear screen. It’s not very useful for most adults due to how low it is, but kids willing to get screen time on anything (not that I condone).
Can you play back virtual time shifted vehicle motion cues, to make yourself barf on demand? This could be a godsend for bulemics. Accessibility at its finest.
These are the type of problems that are completely invisible to someone who doesn't experience it. I wouldn't have even known it was a problem to solve.
A few years back we played an escape room game online with the whole team. One of the clues was in one of my colleagues "room". All he had to do was read it. "Come one read it man, we can win this." He froze. We all insisted he reads it. He could not read it. We thought he had an internet connection issue. Somehow we managed to escape the room and kept going.
The next day he told me he was embarrassed because he couldn't understand what we were talking about. He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.
I have no idea how something like this is ideated, then prototyped, then validated, but it does work wonders for me, and I am so grateful it exists.
Seems pretty straightforward.
1. Be a developer and you (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear indicates you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took a decade and a half to come up with it.
And this is exactly how things in large corporations don't happen. Things in large corporations who pay so well that nobody makes it through the recruitment filters and competition who's more than 2% off from being a pure assessment metrics maximiser. In my mind, chasing an idea like this just does not match the type.
Why it isn't likely to have happened before: trying is only easy for a developer who is not only very familiar with the API for reading those motion sensors but also with the API for system wide overlay. This a strict no for your run of the mill to-do list app. Combine that with the requirement of being affected themselves (or someone close), having the idea, having the time to try and no competing side quests that take up all attention. And the requirement of when the experiment was successful, having the kind of access that actually serves as a conduit for ideas not only on paper to someone in the position to make it a product. That's a lot of stars that need to align. Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle: would still need someone in the know to try it, but chances are that knowledge combined with a bit of prompting could be a path to PoC implementation that could clear effort thresholds that would stand in the way of conventional coding.
Thank you bro!
There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago, where I discovered KineStop which is an app that does the same on Android. I've only tried it a few times but it has worked every time.
Motion sickness person here. iPhone’s stock one doesn’t work for me. Haven’t tried that on Android. Will see if something similar is available on iOS as third party app.
I use KineStop and it works better than Apple's version on iOS did for me. Hopefully AOSP implements one because you do have to give KineStop rather invasive permissions.
Eventually I will try the open source offerings.
Worth checking first whether your phone already has this natively. My one year old Android by Honor has it built in and exposed in the quick settings (sliding the right down). I know a couple others also have it, but not all of them as discoverable
I just found out this capability is also available on Macbooks!
This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...
Very cool that apple made it
I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows
It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
> I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected
Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.
Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.
> I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet.
You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.
A related post from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557530
Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.
I wish this worked a little better. It doesn't solve motion sickness for me when looking at my phone in a car, but it does seem to make it a little less severe.
There is a nice little app that does this on Android available on F-droid:
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness
I tried this and it did nothing for me. For a start, the white dots disappear on a white background, so not a good start. The main thing, though, is while it picked up on the vehicle turning it didn't pick up on acceleration much, which is what actually gives me motion sickness.
The biggest issue Android has both with Kinestop amd this app is unlike Apple's system it does not count for acceleration. I find myself having to look ahead when under acceleration or braking. I have experienced the Apple's motion cues when my friend got curious if it would work because he had no use for it since he did not have motion sickness and I'm unsure if it was just psychological but it felt better than Kinestop which I use.
My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
Honor phones have this in the quick settings (the thing that opens when you slide the right side of the top bar down), labeled "Motion Sickness". Felt well-explained and discoverable.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
On Vivo it's called "Motion Cues". Subtitle: "Dots shift forwards and backwards during acceleration and deceleration". And then it says in tiny font it's for motion sickness, I guess I didn't read that far last time.
I like the "bubbling" dots effect that occurs in an airplane when making a turn. Anyone know the reason?
I guess they're moving in the opposite direction of the turn to force the perception of turning.
I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
I think two accelerometers would do it at different ends of the phone. Normal hand-based motion will rarely include a sustained exact acceleration in one direction on both of these at the same time e.
I always assumed this is triggered by Bluetooth connection to the car?
It’s likely based on motion through the gyro/accelerometers, it triggers on any vehicle I’ve tried. Works wonders on trains and subways as well.
a fun one is seeing the dots go wild when you're on a plane that's taking off
It triggers for me on trains too, so I think it's just accelerometer + location
I would assume the acceleration pattern of being in a vehicle is somewhat distinct.
I'd be curious what happens when you are in a vehicle that drives completely steady (no turns/acceleration/deceleration) - would it eventually turn off? I guess you wouldn't get motion sick in that case either way.
This has been reposted here several times in the last few weeks, but it is a very neat feature. I find myself getting quite motion sick on the bus if I look at my phone, but these dots help me at least check messages here and there without immediately feeling like I'm going to throw up.
This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!
Were a lot of people rawdogging their Thinkpads while driving back in the day? Plugged into an inverter into the cigarette lighter to trickle charge? :-)
Passengers already existed back then, which this intended for. The motion cues are not meant to decrease motion sickness for a driver doom scrolling on their phone while operating their vehicle.
In case you have a problem with the iPhone performance, make sure inside settings disable `Dynamic` pattern for this feature.
iPhone 12 Pro (26.5.2)
I use this a lot on my MacBook Air when working in cabs. It’s beautiful and works well for me
Would it also work onboard a ship? Or movements are too slow to provide enough visual cues on a small screen.
It absolutely is working on a ship. At least for me it helps e.g. when traveling on a big ferry etc. but I guess everybody has a different level of tolerance.
Interested because this autumn will board a ferry for an overnight journey. Sometimes I did suffer seasickness and have read taking medication when onboard already is too late. So I am happy to know there may be a potential solution available. Just in case. Thanks.
Is this related to roll and pitch motion in sea sickness where by knowing the horizon and direction of travel can help?
This is an easy enable with "Automatic Detection". Are there any other phone "Accessibility" options that are useful to everyone?
Not technically "Accessibility" but Android has a "developer" setting called "Show Touches" which puts little dots on screen when you touch it.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
I think that this setting should be promoted out of developer settings as i find it so useful
I use the magnifier on iOS to examine small electronics on a PCB, or other small detailed things.
Similarly, on MacOS I use the Zoom feature (Command Key + mouse scroll) to pixel peep when doing graphical work.
Under "Display & Text Size": "on/off labels" and "increase contrast". "Reduce transparency" is a bit of a mixed bag but is worth trying out.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
I love the background sounds feature. You can add a shortcut in the control center to turn it on and off. I used it a ton when I lived in an apartment with particularly noisy neighbors
As for Reduce Transparency, next iOS version has a proper slider to adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass - worth playing with for anyone on the beta
Bit of a niche, but I use inverted colors and the camera app to find ticks on my dog. Enabled by triple-clicking the lock button under Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Classic invert
What do you mean useful to everyone?
Do you think everyone gets motion sickness?
On Android I use super dim, as someone who enjoys low light situations, even the darkest brightness setting can be too bright sometimes
One of the best and most clever "hidden" features. Very Apple.
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.
Any reason this doesn’t work in CarPlay?
Wonder if Tesla should add something like this to rear screen. It’s not very useful for most adults due to how low it is, but kids willing to get screen time on anything (not that I condone).
Works surprisingly well, had a super sensitive passenger in the car the other day and zero signs of nausea.
Once this was announced a few years back, I was very skeptical that a few dots on the screen would be all that's needed to help me.
And yet, apparently it was.
It's not perfect, but the dots help me to go from instantly feeling sick to lasting 30-40 minutes before I have to stop looking at the screen.
The question I have is whether a phone with motion cues causes less nausea than no phone at all in a window-less boat.
It did for me, but n=1.
n=1, but it works great for me!
Can you play back virtual time shifted vehicle motion cues, to make yourself barf on demand? This could be a godsend for bulemics. Accessibility at its finest.