Your iPhone’s camera is a valuable tool for capturing memories, scanning documents, and connecting with others via video calls. Hence, it can be frustrating when the front or rear camera of your iPhone fails to focus and produces blurry images. In most cases, such issues are caused by misconfigured settings or software glitches, rather than hardware failure. Below, we share some quick and easy tips that should help fix the blurry front or rear camera on your iPhone.
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1. Close and Reopen the Camera App
Restarting the Camera app on your iPhone can help resolve any temporary issues the app may be experiencing. If it’s nothing major, this should solve your problem and save you a lot of time.
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen or press the Home Screen button twice to open the app switcher. Locate the Camera app card and swipe up on it.
Reopen the Camera app and see if it is still blurry on your iPhone.
2. Remove Any Protective Film and Clean the Camera Lens
It is possible that the protective film you have applied to your iPhone’s camera is obstructing the lens’ focus. Try removing the film and cleaning the lens with a soft, dry cloth to see if this resolves the blurry camera issue.
While you’re at it, remove the screen protector from the display if it covers the front camera or if it is scratched.
3. Make Sure You’re Not Zoomed In
When you zoom in, the camera lens has to focus on a smaller part of the scene, which makes it more difficult to get a sharp image. This is especially true in low light or when shooting moving objects. If you are having trouble capturing things while zoomed in, try zooming out and see if that improves the quality of your photos.
4. Maintain the Minimum Focus Distance
Another reason why your iPhone camera may appear blurry is if you are too close to the subject. To avoid this, you need to be aware of the minimum focus distance for your iPhone.
This distance varies depending on the iPhone model. For instance, the iPhone 14 Pro requires a minimum focus distance of 7.8 inches, whereas the iPhone 14 necessitates a minimum focus distance of 6.7 inches. You can perform a quick Google search to determine the focus distance for your iPhone model.
To prevent blurriness in your photos and videos, make sure to keep the proper distance from your subject so that your iPhone camera can focus accurately.
5. Turn Off the AE/AF Lock and Tap to Focus
Your iPhone has an AE/AF (or Auto Exposure and Auto Focus) feature that allows you to lock focus and exposure on a specific area. When you enable this feature, your iPhone will keep the focus on the selected object while blurring everything else. This may give a false impression that your iPhone is not focusing correctly.
You should notice a yellow rectangle at the top, indicating that the AE/AF lock is active. To turn it off, simply tap anywhere outside the yellow box, and your iPhone will refocus. You can then tap on the subject you want to focus on and take your photo.
6. Disable HDR
Enabling HDR mode causes your iPhone to capture three photos at varying exposure levels, which are then combined. If you don’t hold your iPhone steady while taking an HDR photo, it’s likely to be blurry.
Hence, HDR mode is not ideal for capturing fast-moving objects or scenes with a lot of movement. Here’s how you can turn it off.
1. Open the Settings app, tap on Camera, and turn off the toggle next to Smart HDR.
2. Tap on Record Video and disable the toggle for HDR Video.
7. Turn Off Macro Control
If you have an iPhone that supports macro photography, turn off Macro Control. Several users on Reddit reported experiencing blurry cameras while using Macro Control. You can try disabling it on your iPhone to see if that helps.
Open the Settings app and tap on Camera. Scroll down to turn off the toggle next to Macro Control.
8. Check the Front and Rear Camera
If the issue remains, try testing both the front and rear cameras to check if the issue occurs with all the lenses. If both the front and rear cameras are blurry, there might be a problem with the iOS build your iPhone is running. In most cases, simply restarting your iPhone should be enough to resolve any glitches. However, if that doesn’t help, you may have to update or reset your iPhone to fix the problem.
9. Install iOS Updates
Apple regularly releases software updates for iPhones to improve performance and address known issues. Hence, it’s best to keep your iPhone updated to the latest version if you want to benefit from the latest improvements.
Open the Settings app and head to General > Software Update. Install any pending updates and check if the issue is still there.
10. Reset All Settings
Lastly, if all else fails, you can consider resetting your iPhone as a last resort. Doing so will restore your iPhone to its factory default settings, resolving any issues.
1. Open the Settings app. Scroll down to tap on General and select Transfer or Reset iPhone from the following menu.
2. Tap on Reset and select Reset All Settings from the resulting menu.
Preserve Every Detail
It is annoying when your iPhone’s front or back camera is blurry and does not take clear photos or videos. Unless the issue is hardware-related, one of the above tips should prove useful, and your iPhone camera should not appear blurry.
