iPhone 13 Pro Camera Gets Macro Mode Button in iOS 15.2 Beta

The iPhone 13 Pro series, which consists of the base iPhone 13 Pro and the higher-end iPhone 13 Pro Max, has an absolute beast of a camera system. The setup features a wide-angle lens, an Ultra Wide lens, and a Telephoto lens that’s capable of immaculate macro photography.

The iPhone 13 Pro’s Telephoto lens had macro photography covered on the hardware side, but the software side left much to be desired. At launch, there was no manual toggle for macro mode — instead, the iPhone 13 Pro simply switched to Macro mode when you got close enough to an object.

iOS 15.1 made things slightly better, adding the ability to toggle the Auto Macro feature on or off in Settings. However, turning the feature off meant you would have to switch to the Ultra Wide lens in the Camera app, and manually zoom in for a macro shot — far from ideal.

iOS 15.2, which is currently in the second beta for developers and the first public beta, does what Apple should have done in the first place: adding a manual toggle for Macro mode to the Camera app’s User Interface (via @DylanMcD8).

Here’s a better example of the manual Macro mode toggle in action:

To enable the new Macro mode toggle, you need to go to Settings > Camera, and disable the Auto Macro option. Then, when you get close enough to an object in the Camera app’s viewfinder, the Macro mode toggle will appear automatically in the bottom left of the UI.

iOS 15.2 also comes new Preserve Settings for Auto Macro. For a complete rundown of what’s new, check out our coverage of iOS 15.2 beta 2.

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