Apple iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max there are a lot of shiny new features, but the most notable is Apple’s lowering of the “notch” on the screen, surrounding it with the screen and giving it the name Dynamic Island.
Sure, Apple named the camera cutout so the press and the public didn’t name it something worse than the notch, as we’ve seen with iPhone X.
But what’s so special about Dynamic Island? Well, Apple has taken what are actually two different cutouts – you can see them if you look closely at the screen when you rotate the phone – and built in software to hide the camera modules, all in when making it interactive.
Not sure what I mean by that? Let’s take a closer look.
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What apps use Dynamic Island?
There is currently a short list of Apple apps that integrate with Dynamic Island, but that will certainly grow in the future. You’ll see fun animations in the island when you use Face ID to unlock your phone or plug it in to charge. But those are just two of the more basic interactions.
Open the music app of your choice, such as Spotify or Apple Music, and start playing a song. Then exit the app to continue running in the background.
Dynamic Island will begin showing the album art for the currently playing song, along with a sound wave-like animation to the right.
I’m constantly discovering new apps that use Dynamic Island, but for now, the list includes Phone, Maps, Clock, Maps, FaceTime, Apple Pay, Screen Recording, status indicators hotspots and AirPods.
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How to interact with apps that use Dynamic Island
When you’re listening to music or turning on the timer, the island not only acts as a place to provide quick status updates for that task – you can also interact with the respective app directly from the island .
For example, when listening to music, you can tap the island to open the respective app and make changes like skip the track, go back, or press the play and pause buttons.
It’s as simple as that, but where Dynamic Island really shows its potential is when you long press on it.
Using Music as a similar example, long-pressing the island opens a shortcut to all the joysticks you’d expect to control music playback, including AirPlay button.
But please wait a moment. If you have two apps that use Dynamic Island at the same time – say Music and a timer in the Clock app – the island will show animations for both actions, with the timer represented by a small animation on the right. You can use the same tap or long press for either app to interact with them.
Pretty neat.
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With iOS 16.1, Dynamic Island just got better
With iOS 16.1 release on October 24Apple added more to iPhone 14 Pro’s Invert through a new feature coming to all iPhone models called Live Activity.
Live Activity adds the amount of a live widget to your iPhone’s constantly updated lock screen. For example, apps like Uber can use Live Activity to update the driver’s location after you hail a ride. Or sports apps can put game scores on your lock screen, regularly updating scores or plays.
The screenshot above is taken from FotMob . application. When you favorite a game that’s active in the app, FotMob will add it to your lock screen. As you unlock your phone and are actively using it, you will continue to see scores in Dynamic Island. You can long press to see a larger version of the widget, or tap it to launch the app. This is really cool and I can’t wait to see more apps supporting it.
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There’s a hidden gesture for Dynamic Island in iOS 16.1
Talking about iOS 16.1, when you updateiPhone 14 Pro With Apple’s latest and greatest software, you’ll have one more option to interact with the island by swiping across it.
If you have two apps open and active on the island, you can swipe toward the center of the screen to minimize one of the activities, or if you swipe back to hide everything on the island entirely. Swipe out towards the edge of the screen to bring back any activity.
