Apple’s weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness

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Follow See All Tech * Apple Apple Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All Apple * Reviews Reviews Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All Reviews # Apple’s weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness Vehicle Motion Cues let me read and write in the passenger seat without wanting to die. Vehicle Motion Cues let me read and write in the passenger seat without wanting to die. by Thomas [Image 2: Thomas

quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400) Thomas Ricker Deputy Editor Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All by Thomas Ricker Jun 16, 2026, 11:30 AM UTC * 9 3 93 Comments (All [Image 3: [Image 4: quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400) Image: Asya Demidova for The Verge Part Of Summer Upgrade Week see [Image 5: Thomas quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=96) Thomas [Image 6: Thomas quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400) Thomas Ricker Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All by Thomas Ricker is a deputy editor and Verge co-founder with a passion for human-centric cities, e-bikes, and life as a digital nomad.

He’s been a tech journalist for 20 years. _I’ll just work from the car_, I thought. But after a few minutes of staring at my screen on quick mountain switchbacks I could feel the first signs of cold, coagulated nausea bubbling up from that sweaty place in my gut. I looked to the horizon for relief, but nothing helped... until I remembered Apple’s magic dots. Introduced in 2024, Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues promise to tap into your device’s accelerometer and gyroscope to reduce or, in my case, even _eliminate_ the motion sickness felt when trying to use an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook inside a moving

[Image 7: It’s weird, but it quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400) _It’s weird, but it _ Image: Apple According to big-S Science, this type of vehicle motion sickness is caused by the eyes staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues solve this by placing dots around the periphery of the display that move in harmony with the motion of the car. When the car turns right, the dots sweep across the screen to the left; when the car brakes the dots slide forward. It sounds preposterous, but I’m here to tell you that it actually works.

Once enabled, I’ve comfortably read books in the Kindle app on my phone for a few hours at a go, and even written 1,000-word reviews while my wife drove our camper van to the next destination. She uses Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues now, too, because they’ve been a game changer for how we balance work with life on the [Image [redacted card]%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=2400) _On this straight stretch of road Apple shows fewer dots that remain stationary and invert black text to white when needed (look closely at the letter “s” covered by a dot on the left

_ Photo by Thomas Ricker / The [Image [redacted card]%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=2400) _Works in macOS, too, which made it possible to keep working while driving down these _ Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Vehicle Motion Cues can be configured under accessibility settings in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. They can be turned on, off, or set to appear automatically when vehicle motion is detected. I prefer to toggle the dots to avoid seeing them when I’m driving the car. The black dots are fairly unobtrusive, but they can interfere with maps, text, and imagery on long straight stretches of road that cause the dots to sit motionless

(Apple should dim all the dots in those situations). You can also configure the dot size, color, and density if you want, but I found the defaults to work just fine. I made it easy to quickly toggle the Motion Cues on and off by double tapping the back of my iPhone. To do the same, head over to Accessibility –> Touch –> Back Tap and set the Double Tap gesture to Vehicle Motion Cues on devices supporting iOS 18 and above. I’m fortunate that I remembered this obscure accessibility feature that I used almost daily on a recent two-month road trip around Europe.

Hopefully you’ll find similar success when traveling this summer. 93 Comments **Follow topics and authors** from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. * Thomas [Image 10: Thomas quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400) Thomas Ricker Deputy Editor Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All by Thomas Ricker * Apple Apple Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow See All Apple * Reviews Reviews Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

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