Apple's latest iOS 15.2 beta fixes macro mode confusion for iPhone 13 Pro

Apple's latest iOS 15.2 beta simplifies the iPhone 13 Pro's macro mode by adding a button that lets you turn it on and off (via 9to5Mac). The icon, resembling a small flower, appears whenever you are close enough to an object to take a macro photo and lets you easily switch between having the auto macro mode on and off without going to settings.

A ZolloTech video shows how the feature works in iOS 15.2 beta 2 at present - if you have disabled Auto Macro when you get close to something the button will appear. Tapping it will turn Auto Macro back on, and your phone will switch to macro mode. When you Tap the button again it turns Auto Macro off and returns to the normal camera.

After the release of the iPhone 13, some reviewers had an opinion that the automatic transition to macro mode could be jarring, as the phone was changing lenses without showing that the change had happened in the user interface (the lens indicator does not change from 1x to 0.5x as it normally would). Apple fixed that by introducing a switch (Settings> Camera> Auto Macro) that allowed you to disable auto-switching, but that made things a bit tricky. Just by switching to the ultra-wide camera and zooming in on the subject, you'd get different results than the macro mode would - to fully replicate the macro effect, you would also have to zoom in at 0.9x manually.

The change in 15.2 beta 2 simplifies things. If you don't want to think much about it, you can leave the Auto Macro option on and your iPhone 13 Pro will take a macro shot when you are close enough to an object. If you a looking for finer control or find the switch sounds jarring, you can also disable Auto Macro but still have easy access to the mode if you want via the button that will appear when the phone gets to know you are trying to take a macro image.

While this is probably how the system should have worked all along, it's good to see it's finally making its way to phones. Hopefully, this fix will not change and remain the same during the beta process and will be part of the final 15.2 release.