Apple’s Unique Anti-Nausea Dots Helped Alleviate My Car Sickness

I decided to work from the car, but after a few minutes navigating those winding mountain roads, I felt the all-too-familiar wave of nausea creeping in. I glanced at the horizon for some relief, but nothing seemed to help… until I recalled Apple’s innovative motion dots.

Launched in 2024, Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues utilize your device’s accelerometer and gyroscope to combat motion sickness when using an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook in a moving vehicle.

Science explains that this type of motion sickness occurs when your eyes focus on a static screen while your inner ear senses the car’s movements—turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues address this by displaying dots around the edges of the screen that move in sync with the car’s motion. When the car turns right, the dots shift left; when it brakes, they slide forward.

It may sound unbelievable, but I can attest that it works. Once I activated the feature, I was able to read books in the Kindle app on my phone for hours and even write 1,000-word reviews while my wife drove our camper van to our next stop. She’s now using Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues as well, and they’ve transformed how we juggle work and life on the road.

You can find Vehicle Motion Cues in the accessibility settings on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. They can be toggled on or off, or set to activate automatically when vehicle motion is detected. I prefer to switch them off while I’m driving, as the black dots are fairly subtle but can interfere with maps and text during long stretches of straight road when they remain still (it would be great if Apple could dim them in those cases). You can also adjust the size, color, and density of the dots, but I found the default settings to be perfectly adequate.

To quickly toggle the Motion Cues, I set up a double tap on the back of my iPhone. If you want to do the same, go to Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap and assign the Double Tap gesture to Vehicle Motion Cues on devices running iOS 18 and above.

I’m glad I remembered this handy accessibility feature during a recent two-month road trip across Europe. I hope you find it just as useful on your travels this summer.