How to measure a Christmas tree with your iPhone
(Picture: Egor Komarov / Pexels)Anybody who has bought a lovely Christmas tree, only to find you can’t get it through the door will tell you, it’s important to measure things. But tape measures aren’t always practical and are easily forgotten. So how do you check if the tree (or anything else) will fit next to the sofa before you lug it home? In a pinch, the answer could be your iPhone.
Since the iPhone 12 Pro was released, Apple’s Pro handsets have packed a little-used sensor called LiDAR — or “Light Detecting and Ranging”. This uses light to measure distances surprisingly accurately for objects great and small.
So, if you’re off Christmas tree shopping this weekend, you’ll probably want to use it. Here’s how to use your iPhone to measure things.
How to measure a Christmas tree with your iPhone
- Open the Measure app. It comes preinstalled on compatible iPhones but, if you’ve accidentally deleted it, you can redownload it from the App Store here.
- Point the camera at the base of the tree you want to measure and tap the plus icon
- Slowly move the camera upwards towards the top of the form, so a line appears. Tap the plus icon again when you hit the top of the tree
- Press the circular icon on the bottom right-hand corner to save the fully annotated screenshot. You can then send it on to others for a second opinion as to whether your dream tree is too ambitious
- You may want to check out its width, too. To do that, repeat the process, tapping the plus icon on either side of the tree
Compatible iPhones
Before you set off tree shopping, you should know that only certain iPhones pack the necessary LiDAR sensor. These are:
- iPhone 12 Pro
- iPhone 12 Pro Max
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- iPhone 14 Pro
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
LiDAR has also been in iPad Pro models since 2020, but is obviously a bit more unwieldy for measuring Christmas trees.
What about Android?
While Apple has made LiDAR a key part of its top-end iPhones, Android phones don’t have the same dedication to depth-sensing technology, meaning measurement apps are generally a lot less reliable.
For a while, Samsung and some others put Time of Flight (ToF) sensors in their phones, which behave similarly to LiDAR. Unfortunately, Samsung abandoned this after the Galaxy S20 — but, if you happen to have an earlier supported handset, you could try out the company’s Quick Measure app for similar results.
Your Android phone may be an exception, so it’s worth looking up the model and seeing what camera sensors it has. Good luck with that.
