The Measure app makes it easy to measure how tall someone is, as long as you have the right device.
Jason Cipriani/CNET
You may have heard about Apple including a lidar sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, two of the company’s latest iPhone models. The new sensor improves portrait photos, and even night mode shots captured with the iPhone 12 Pro’s rear camera because it speeds up focus and portrait mode photos. But that’s not all lidar can help with.
Lidar stands for “light detection and ranging” and it works by bouncing lasers off of objects to measure their distance, based on how long it takes for the light to get back to the sensor. The sensor itself isn’t new tech — in fact, the 2020 iPad Pro ($950 at Amazon) has lidar, too — and the same tech is often used in self-driving cars.
Here’s one party trick I just discovered, with the help of MacRumors, and I lay out a few more below.
For my first trick, here’s how to use the iPhone 12 Pro’s camera to measure a person’s height in just a couple of seconds (I did this with my kids and they loved it).
Pretty cool stuff, right?
Apple
1. Open the Measure app on your iPhone.
2. Point the rear camera at a person who is either standing or sitting and make sure you get their entire body — from head to toe — in the frame.
3. After a second or two, a line will appear above their head with an estimate of their height, including items like their hair or a hat.
4. You can take a picture of the measurement with a tap on the shutter button, saving it to your camera roll.
In my testing, the measurement was accurate within half an inch. My son’s curly hair caused his first measurement to be half an inch too high, but after he combed it down, it was spot on at 4 feet, 7.5 inches.
I also tested it on myself, and small things like the angle of my head or wearing a hat resulted in the same slightly short 5 foot, 9 inch reading. When I stood straight up, however, looking directly at the camera without a hat on, it was more accurate, with a 5 foot, 10 inch reading.
You can get a rough estimate of more than just a person’s height with the Measure app. You can use it to get the dimensions of a piece of furniture, for example, to see if it will fit through a door. I recently measured a TV to settle a debate on whether it was 55 or 65 inches (it was 65).
When the Measure app first launched with iOS 12, I explained how to use it to measure random household objects or figure square footage. With the addition of lidar on Apple devices, the app is getting more accurate. So if you’ve upgraded your iPhone, it’s worth giving the Measure tool another shot.
Using a third-party app, you can scan an entire room and create a 3D map.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Want to try more fun lidar features?
The lidar sensor isn’t limited to just measuring different objects. You can use it to create 3D maps of a room (as shown above), or a 3D recreation of a single object, which you can then print out on a 3D printer when you use an app like Polycam.
According to CNET’s Scott Stein, the Apple Arcade game Hot Lava uses the lidar sensor to scan a room, after which he could hide virtual stuff behind real items in the room, like a chair.
As more apps are updated to improve the augmented reality experience thanks to the lidar sensor, there’s no telling what else we’ll be able to do with compatible iPhone and iPad models.
After impressing your friends and family with your iPhone 12’s ($799 at Apple) fun trick, make sure to check out these hidden features in iOS 14. If you’re still learning your way around the iPhone 12, here are some settings worth taking a look at. Like, if you don’t live in an area with 5G coverage, you can turn it off.