How to Change Photos Thumbnail Sizes on iPhone & iPad
If you’ve ever wanted to browse your photo library a bit more efficiently, adjusting the thumbnail size in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad can make a big difference. Whether you’re looking to see more images on the screen at once, or you prefer larger previews for easier viewing, changing the thumbnail size gives you more control over how your photos are displayed in iOS. This is a very simple adjustment to make that can make navigating through hundreds or even thousands of pictures faster and more comfortable, especially on devices of varying screen sizes, like the iPhone and iPad.
How to Adjust Thumbnail Size in Photos on iPhone & iPad
This trick is simple but uses a gesture that users may or may not already be familiar with:
- Open the Photos app as usual and go to the main camera roll, then perform the following gestures with your fingers, depending if you want larger of smaller thumbnails:
- Larger thumbnails: Use a spread gesture (two fingers spreading apart) to make the Photos thumbnail size larger
- Smaller thumbnails: Use a pinch gesture (two fingers pinching inwards) to make the Photos thumbnail sizes smaller
- The Photos thumbnail sizes will adjust instantly according to the gesture you used
If you’re looking to see more thumbnails on screen at the same time, use the two finger pinch gesture to make the thumbnail sizes smaller.
If you’re lookin to see more details of photos and fewer thumbnails on the screen at the same time, use the two-finger spread gesture to make the thumbnail sizes larger.
As you play around with these gestures, you’ll notice you can make the thumbnails take up basically the entire width of the screen if you’d like to, or shrink them down so many thumbnails are visible at once on screen. How you use this feature is entirely up to you and what you’re looking to see on your specific Photos app and device.
The pinch and spread gestures may be familiar to some iPhone and iPad users already, because they’re the same gestures used to zoom in and zoom out of many other apps and features on the devices, including zooming in and out of Safari, many other apps, zooming in/out on videos, zooming with the camera, and also for some unexpected features like saving as PDF. Point being, this is a widely used gesture on iPhone and iPad, particularly for zooming in and out, but also for some other functionality as well.
Do you like to see more or fewer thumbnails in the Photos app on iPhone or iPad? Did you know about these gestures?
