Sometimes the most useful and surprising functions of our devices go unnoticed. Among the many capabilities that Apple integrates into our iPhones and iPads, there is one that deserves us to talk about: the ability to measure a person’s height simply by aiming the camera at them. Just as we can remove objects from a photo on our iPhone or edit a photo with the photographic styles of the iPhone 16 to give it a personal touch, thanks to the LiDAR sensor present in the most recent models we can obtain a surprisingly accurate and fast measurement, directly from the Measurements app.
A little-known feature of the Measures app
The Measurements app has been helping us interact with our environment for yearswhether to measure furniture, distances or any object we have in sight. Additionally, there is a somewhat hidden feature that, with just a few touches, allows us to measure the height of any person with surprising ease.
We need, of course, the LiDAR sensor included in devices like iPhone 12 Pro or later and iPad Pro 2020 or laterwhich allows you to create a three-dimensional map of the environment with great precision. The result? We can measure distances of up to 4 meters with a level of detail so high that it surprises.
Best of all, we don’t need to do anything complicated: just open the Measurements app, aim at the person we want to measure and, after a few seconds, a line appears on the -above his head with his exact size. If we want to record this measurement, we can take a photo that will include the data superimposed.
How does this technology actually work?
The secret to the apparent magic of this feature lies in the LiDAR sensora component that measures the time it takes for a beam of light to reflect off surrounding objects. With this information, our device generates a three-dimensional map of the scene that the camera has in front of it.
In the case of measuring a person’s height, this system automatically detects the contours of the body and the position of the head, precisely calculating the distance from the ground to the top of the head. All this is done in seconds and, thanks to Apple’s algorithms, the results are accurate to the nearest centimeter in good lighting conditions.
This type of detail is what turns our devices into more and more useful tools. We often forget they are there until we need them, but when we discover what they can do, they surprise us.
Whether it’s to quickly measure ourselves, to check if the new TV will fit in its location, to align a picture hanging on the wall or simply to be able to say to the little ones in the house “how you’ve grown!” “, this function is another of the small details that make our devices more and more useful.
So the next time someone asks us if we know how big that is, we can whip out our iPhone and answer accurately. No tricks, no waiting, just technology that, well designed, simply surprises.
