The rotor, VoiceOver's multi-purpose tool
What is the rotor?
The rotor is a VoiceOver gesture that gives access to a large number of settings and actions; many of these are available only through the rotor gesture. It can be used to change the speed and volume of VoiceOver speech; it can allow you to read through text word by word or even character by character so you can be sure of the spelling; the rotor allows you to select handwriting as your method of text input and even allows you to tap Braille characters on the screen. There is much more that the rotor can do.
It may help to think of the rotor as a clock face with options arranged around the dial. The rotor gesture allows you to move clockwise or anti-clockwise around the dial until you reach the option you want.
The rotor gesture
Apple describe the rotor gesture as "rotate two fingers on the screen around a point between them". You may find it easier to use a thumb and finger or you may even prefer to use two hands. Another approach is to place two fingers on the screen and then rotate the phone. (This probably isn't practical on a tablet.) Please experiment in VoiceOver practice to see what works best for you.
Some people find the rotor gestures impossible to perform. Fortunately, all VoiceOver gestures can be reassigned to alternative gestures and it is possible, for example, to assign the rotor gestures to a two finger swipe left and right.
These settings can be found in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Commands. Please seek assistance if necessary.
Rotor items
The items that are arranged around the rotor dial change depending on what you are doing at the time.
There is a rotor items setting in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Rotor where you can change the items that may appear when you use the rotor gesture to select from the rotor dial. A trainer may have set that up for you but, if you are confident, feel free to change these settings to add items like handwriting or Braille Screen Input and perhaps to remove items you don't use. It is also possible to change the order of items on your rotor dial here.
Using the rotor gesture
When the rotor gesture is used to select a specific rotor item , with few exceptions, it determines the effect of a one finger vertical swipe up or down until the rotor position is changed. Some apps change the rotor position, so be aware that it may not be where you last left it.
For a simple example, you can explore how the rotor can be used to change the speed at which VoiceOver talks. Rotate the rotor clockwise until you hear "speech rate". If you overshoot, turn the rotor in the opposite direction or go all the way round the dial clockwise again if you find that easier. With the rotor set to speech rate, swipe up with one finger to make VoiceOver speak faster and swipe down with one finger to make VoiceOver speak more slowly. The volume rotor setting similarly controls the volume of VoiceOver speech relative to the main volume setting. If you are new to VoiceOver you may be prone to accidental swipes so it is sensible to rotate your rotor setting to something like words after you have used the rotor to adjust speech rate or volume.
Other uses of the rotor, including how helpful it can be when browsing the web and editing text are described in other sections.
Apple Support have produced a helpful guide to the rotor. Although some readers may find some of the rotor settings too technical for their taste I recommend reeding this guide to get an insight into the power of the rotor.