Tesla has added pinch-to-zoom and pan support to its Dashcam Viewer, letting drivers zoom in on captured footage directly from their vehicle’s screen. As spotted this week by X user @gbhall, the feature works across all camera angles — including the multi-camera grid view — and finally eliminates the need to pull the USB drive just to inspect a small detail in a clip.
While Tesla didn’t explicitly call this out in its release notes, the feature appears to have rolled out as part of the company’s 2025 Holiday Update, which began deploying in early December with software version 2025.44.25.1. That update delivered several headline additions, including Grok with Navigation Commands (Beta), Paint Shop, and Tesla Photobooth, but it also placed a renewed focus on improving the in-car Dashcam Viewer experience.
Alongside new overlays for speed, steering angle, and self-driving state, as well as a refreshed UI for older Hardware 3 (HW3) vehicles, Tesla introduced several undocumented Dashcam Viewer improvements. Owners can now see how much free space remains on their USB drive directly from the vehicle, and tapping the information icon reveals which features — such as Dashcam recordings, Sentry Mode clips, or USB music — are consuming the most storage. Tesla also added the ability to filter Sentry Mode clips by trigger type, making it far easier to find footage saved due to door handle interaction, honking the horn, or manual saves.
The newly discovered zoom feature may be the most practical addition yet, though. On vehicles equipped with AMD Ryzen hardware, drivers can pinch to zoom just like they would on a smartphone, then pan around the frame to inspect specific areas of the video. This is especially helpful given Tesla’s wide-angle, fish-eye camera lenses, which tend to push objects farther away on screen and make license plates or faces harder to read.
Previously, zooming into Dashcam footage required removing the glovebox USB drive and viewing clips on a computer. Now, everything can be done directly in the car. While Intel Atom vehicles don’t appear to be receiving the feature at this time, Tesla has made it available on all AMD Ryzen vehicles, including those still running HW3.
It’s a small change, but one that meaningfully improves an already essential feature — and a good reminder that Tesla often slips some of its most useful upgrades in without much fanfare.
