The rotor control is an invisible dial that you can use to change the results of up and down flick gestures when VoiceOver is turned on.
Rotate two fingers on the iPhone screen to “turn” the dial to choose between options.
The effect of the rotor depends on what you’re doing. For example, if you’re reading text in an email you received, you can use the rotor to switch between hearing text spoken word-by-word or character-by-character when you flick up or down. If you’re browsing a webpage, use the rotor to choose whether you hear text word-by-word or character-by-character, hear just the headers, hear just the links (all of them, visited links, or links not yet visited), hear form elements, or hear descriptions of images. In other words, you can use the rotor setting to hear all the text, or to jump from one element to another of a certain type, such as headers or links.
Rotor options depend on the context of what you’re doing.
Select and hear text character-by-character
Select and hear text word-by-word
Select and hear text character-by-character
Select and hear text word-by-word
Select and hear headers
Select and hear links
Select and hear form controls
Select and hear visited links
Select and hear links not visited
Select and hear images
Select and hear static text
Zoom in or out
Move insertion point and hear text character-by-character
Move insertion point and text word-by-word
Text editing functions
Auto-text
Select and hear value character-by-character
Select and hear value word-by-word
Adjust the value of the control object