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 line by line, word by word or even character by character so you can be sure of the spelling; the rotor even allows you to select handwriting as your method of text input. There is much more that the rotor can do, including being an essential text editing tool. 

It may help to think of the rotor as a clock face with options arranged around the dial. A clockwise or anti-clockwise rotor gesture allows you to move clockwise or anti-clockwise around the dial until you reach the option you want. 

The rotor gesture

Apple describes 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.) The rotation doesn't need to be a big move; you wil probably find that a small rotary movement is sufficient. Please experiment in VoiceOver practice to discover what works best for you. 

Some people find the rotor gesture impossible to perform.  Fortunately, all VoiceOver gestures can be reassigned to alternative gestures and a good choice for most people is to assign the clockwise and anti-clockwise rotor gestures to a two finger swipe right and left. The default use of these two finger swipe gestures is for grouped navigation, a feature which many VoiceOver users  don't turn on and isn't currently covered on this website.  If you use grouped navigation and have difficulty with the standard rotor gesture you willl need to choose other gestures for your rotor gestures.

The settings to redefine the rotor gestures can be found in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Commands > Touch Gestures. Please seek assistance if necessary; it's easy to do damage in this area of Settings.

Rotor items

The items that are arranged around the rotor dial change depending on what you are doing at the time; they vary with the context.

You are in control of which items can appear on your rotor dial. 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 turn the dial. A trainer may have set that up for you but, if you are confident, feel free to change these settings to add some items you need and certainly to remove items you don't use. It will speed things up if you only have items you regularly need to use on your rotor. It is also possible to change the order of items on your rotor dial here so you can more quickly access the items you use most.

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 "speaking 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 speaking 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 speaking rate or volume. If you don't think you are likely to want to change the speed or volume of VoiceOver speech this way it is best to remove speaking rate and volume from your rotor in the Rotor Items settings mentioned above. This will both remove clutter from your rotor dial and also avoid unintentional changes to speaking rate or volume.

 Other uses of the rotor, including how helpful it can be when browsing the web, editing text and starting handwriting are described in other sections.

Apple Support has 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.

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