Car sick iPhone owners will get a cool new iOS 18 software feature to reduce motions sickness

Suffering from motion sickness is nobody's idea of fun, especially if you have to travel in vehicles a lot for whatever reason. Thankfully, there are ways to help alleviate the symptoms of motion or travel sickness, and Apple has announced a new one specifically designed for iPhone and iPad users.

Rather than taking a tablet or using another approach, Apple has told users that it has a software fix for their very real-world problem. In a press release previewing new accessibility features coming to the iPhone and iPad later this year, Apple pointed out a new Vehicle Motion Cues feature that will help people deal with sickness while on the move.

2

Apple says that research has shown that motion sickness is commonly caused by a sensory conflict between what a person can see and what they can feel. For example, looking at a stationary object - like an iPhone or iPad - while feeling the motion of a vehicle can be enough to make some people feel unwell. To help with that, Apple's new Vehicle Motion Cues feature will use animated dots on the edges of the screen to represent the changes in motion. The idea is to remove that sensory conflict mentioned earlier.

The approach is an interesting one and Apple says the iPhone or iPad will detect motion and then display moving dots to match it. THe feature can be enabled automatically while it can also be controlled manually using Control Center.

Apple hasn't specifically said that the new feature will be part of the upcoming iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 updates, but it didn't give any firm details on timescales for the new feature. It did say that it would come later this year, suggesting that we can expect the accessibility feature to be part of a raft of new additions to iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.

Both of the new software updates are expected to be announced at WWDC on June 10. From there, a months-long beta process will be undertaken before Apple makes the new updates available for everyone to download in September - likely alongside the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. New software updates will also be released for the Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, and Apple Vision Pro, too.

Apple's big September software updates are expected to sport new AI features, reports claim. The company is said to be close to a deal with OpenAI that will see the company's ChatGPT form the basis of some of those new features.