Anyone that does any capacity of text editing on their iPhone, whether it’s writing a document inMicrosoft Word, modifying something drafted out in theMessagesapp’s text field, or some other form of the matter, may have noticed that the magnifying glass no longer appears when moving the cursor somewhere specific in the body of text.
Apple made this change because you’re able to now pan the cursor across your body of text by tapping and dragging on the keyboard. But that hasn’t stopped a growing number of nostalgic iPhone users from wishing that the classic magnifying glass was still a thing. Said nostalgia is only amplified by the fact that the magnifying glass still exists on the iPad in the latest versions of iPadOS 14.
While it’s unlikely Apple will backtrack and revive the magnifying glass feature on iPhones for the purpose of text editing, the good news is that jailbreakers can take advantage of a newly released and freejailbreak tweakcalledLoupeby iOS developerudevsto get this popular feature back:
In the before (left) and after (right) screenshot examples above, you can see that the cursor moves before installing the tweak, but the magnifying glass doesn’t appear. Once installed, the cursor moves, but you can better see where your cursor will end up thanks to the magnifying glass being your guide.
Once installed, Loupe adds a simple preference pane to the Settings app where users can configure a couple of options:
Things you can do here include:
A respring doesn’t appear to be required to save your changes, so the developer doesn’t include a button to do so in the Loupe preference pane.
Those interested in getting the magnifying glass back on theirjailbrokeniOS 14 devices candownload the Loupe tweak for free from udevs’ personal repositoryin their favorite package manager. The tweak is only intended for iOS 14 devices and has only been sufficiently tested on iOS 14.3 and later. It may or may not work on earlier versions of iOS 14, so users should be aware of that before installing.
If you aren’t already using udevs’ personal repository, then you can add it to your package manager of choice with the following URL:
Do you plan to bring the magnifying glass back on your jailbroken iPhone? Tell us why or why not in the comments section down below.
