How To Fix Blurry Pictures and Videos On iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

Are you getting blurry pictures and videos when you use the camera on the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 8 Plus? If you are, you can follow some quick steps to get it fixed. While this issue has been widespread, there are quite a few different possible causes. You may need to try a few different troubleshooting methods.

In some cases, you may have to send off your iPhone device to get repaired by Apple. Hopefully, this won’t be the case and you can fix your blurry camera problem with one of the tips below.

Clean the lens

Start with the simplest fix on the list: cleaning the lens. Sometimes, the reason your camera is taking blurry pictures is because the lens is trying to focus on something that is stuck to it. iPhone cameras are not designed to focus on objects that are that close, so it will just keep going in and out of focus.

To fix, take a clean microfiber cloth and rub it against the lens. Don’t worry about being gentle – you couldn’t break the lens if you tried. Make sure you clean it thoroughly – even the slightest of smudges, invisible to the naked eye, can deceive the lens, causing it to take blurry pics.

If you can see dust inside the lens, you will have to take the phone to an Apple Store. Otherwise, if the blurry images persist after you’ve cleaned your iPhone camera lens, you may want to try the tips we have listed below.

Take off the case

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus offer optical image stabilization, and using a metallic case or a magnetic external lens can interfere with it. To see if this is the problem, try taking a picture without the external lens or case. If the picture is crisp and clear, you have found your culprit.

Hold it steady

The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus have extremely sophisticated cameras. Apple reportedly has 400 people on the team that engineers iPhone cameras. To create as good a user experience as possible, iPhone tries to focus really fast – but if you’re shaking the iPhone at all, that makes it hard for it to decide what to focus on.

To focus on something in particular, tap it on the camera screen. The screen will pulse briefly, then come into focus. Once it’s focused, try to hold the camera as steadily as possible. If you move it to far in any direction, the camera will refocus on the center of the picture, and you will have to tap again to force it to refocus.

Update your phone

iOS 11 introduced a bug that rendered the camera unable to focus, and Apple included a few fixes for blurry photos in iOS 11.1. To check your current version of iOS, open settings, tap “General,” then tap “About.” If you have not updated, connect your iPhone to a computer and use iTunes to update to the latest version of iOS.

(Hard) restart your phone

Sometimes, not having any RAM free can cause your iPhone to lag, meaning it will not have enough time to focus before a picture is taken. Restarting your phone will free up RAM. To restart your phone, follow these instructions:

Go to the home screen.
Press and hold the power button until the “Slide to power off” screen appears. Slide it.
Now, press and hold the Home button for a few seconds until the Home screen appears again.

To do a hard restart, follow these (odd!) instructions:

Press and quickly release the volume up button.
Press and quickly release the volume down button.
Press and hold the power button.

Free up storage

In other cases, your device may be slow because it has limited storage space left. To fix this issue, open Settings, tap on “General,” then tap “Storage & iCloud Usage.” After that, tap “Manage Storage.” Tap any items in Documents and Data, then slide the items you do not need to the left and tap to delete them.

Reset your iPhone

Still not working? If you still have blurry images, follow the steps below. Note that doing so will reset your iPhone 8 to factory settings. You may want to take it to the Apple Store before you try this.

Turn on your iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus
Tap “Settings,” and then tap “General”
Tap “Reset”
Enter your Apple ID and password when prompted
The reset process should take a few minutes
You’ll know the iPhone 8 has reset when you see the iPhone welcome screen

If none of this works, take your phone to the Apple Store. They will likely be able to diagnose the problem of the blurriness, and you might even get a new phone out of the deal!