iPhone camera won’t focus? Here’s what to do

Most people are able to photograph with an iPhone, but there are times where you may have difficulty with it – specifically not being able to get the iPhone to focus properly.

And if your smartphone camera cannot focus, you will only be able to snap blurred photographs. This problem pretty common, but fortunately there are a few ways you can resolve the issue and get back to taking awesome photographs.

How to fix iPhone camera not focusing

Set a focus point

Sometimes the camera doesn’t focus because there’s no specific point in your photo for it to focus on.

Use your fingers first and place them in the center of your screen on the area you want your phone to focus on – this could be a person’s facial expression, a flower or a city building.

Once the focus point is determined, the camera will focus the object in focus automatically. This is the easiest way that you can get your camera app focusing properly.

Lock Auto Focus

Focus is a feature of the iPhone camera which enables auto exposure, and whenever you use your iPhone, the auto focus setting will be used.

For an iPhone to focus accurately, you need to disable auto-focus. This is pretty easy to do.

You can use your finger, press on the area you want to focus but hold it there for a few seconds. When you do thus, a square should pop up – this is when you should release your finger.

Reset your settings

Software updates may have had a negative effect on your iPhones camera, and this may be the reason why it won’t focus.

You can do this by going into your Settings and clicking through to General, and then resetting your iPhone.

Unfortunately, this will reset all of your iPhone settings. You can also play with the camera settings on your phone to try and fix the camera focus issue too without having to reset everything.

Restart iPhone

In many cases, making sure that you turn your phone on and off again may also be able to resolve the issue.

It’s a common fix, but it does work for a good percentage of iPhone issues, including when your camera won’t focus.

You can do this by holding down the power button to turn your device off. Then, wait a few seconds and turn the iPhone back on.

Update iPhone Software

Updating your iPhone is another one of the easiest ways to fix the camera’s focal point problem (though an update can sometimes stop your iPhone working too).

If your camera has lost focus after an error from a software problem, then updating to the most recent iOS version should fix the issue.

You can do this by going into your iPhone settings and selecting the update option, which is pretty easy to do.

Remove the iPhone Case

In some cases, the iPhone case that you’re using will obscure your camera and stop it from working properly.

The good news is that this is quite easy to solve and work out whether your case is causing the issue – simply remove the case from obscuring your device’s camera lens and it should be fixed.

Tap the top of iPhone Several times

One of the most unknown ways that you can fix an iPhone camera that won’t focus is by tapping the top of the iPhone a few times.

You can do this at the top of the phone camera, right where the camera is. Though it seems like an unlikely fix, it’s a good way to resolve the issue.

Move closer or further away

There are several possible causes for the iPhone cameras to stop working, and actually quite a common cause is that the device isn’t close enough to the object.

When the focus is positioned more than ten metres away, the phone camera cannot focus properly.

You can resolve this pretty easily by moving a little closer to the object you want to focus on.

Conclusion

The fact is you can only take great pictures on the iPhone if it focuses properly. It’s frustrating to have an iPhone with a camera that won’t focus, especially when iPhones are supposedly among the best smartphones (and the most expensive!).

It’s an annoying issue for people who use the phone, but fortunately if you follow the above steps you should be able to get your iPhone camera to focus properly.

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Author

Edward

Edward brings years of experience in a variety of different fields including online marketing & No-code app development, and he's been investing in stocks and cryptocurrency since 2016. Outside of work you'll usually find him watching movies at the local cinema or playing games in the Apple Arcade.

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