What is Dynamic Island Apple and how to use it

Jul. 08, 2024

What is Dynamic Island Apple and how to use it

A fresh and valuable feature launched by Apple in the iPhone 14 Pro and later models became a real breakthrough. Dynamic Island is your all-in-one hub for the in-progress background activity and alerts. Now, your front camera notch no longer wastes space but allows you to interact with essential notifications immediately. Track your timer, receive low battery notifications, switch the playing song or a podcast, and more with Dynamic Island help. Intriguing, isn&#;t it?

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With more than seven years of experience in graphic and UI/UX design, our team is a real pro in all design innovations. We&#;ll gladly describe the crucial peculiarities of the Dynamic Island features in this article so you can get the most out of it.

What is the Dynamic Island: Everything You Need to Know

The Dynamic Island is a relatively new interactive iOS 16 feature housing the TrueDepth front camera notch. Starting from the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, it&#;s now spread to all iPhone 15 models.

Dynamic Island is a pill-shaped zone on the upper side of the &#;iPhone&#; display. It adapts the camera hardware and is a shape-shifting hub for vital iPhone alerts or your ongoing activity. Such elements are what make iOS development exciting. Since the feature is triggered automatically, you can view a multitasking bar within seconds without additional actions. This totally new UI experience is provided by competent design. Let&#;s get more insights about its design in the next paragraph.

UI Design of Dynamic Island

To grasp what is Dynamic Island Apple, let&#;s recall what iOS offered us before implementing it. In earlier iPhone models (before iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max), starting from the iPhone X, we saw a notch at the top of the display. This black-colored part contained a front camera, a top speaker, and a facial recognition system (Face ID). It already had a pill shape but was combined with the borders in the cut-to-corners way. This design allowed your OLED display to remain interactive only on the notch's top corners, right and left.

However, Apple believes that the display should always take center stage. That&#;s why the company designed the rounded black and touchable area, smaller than the notch and size-and-shape-changed depending on what's displayed. Dynamic Island became a certain space-saver since it allows displaying content on the screen between and around the cutouts. It still hides the TrueDepth sensors and camera but is more appealing and functional. So, how to use Dynamic Island? Scroll down for more details.

Dynamic Island Shape Change

As we previously discussed, Dynamic Island design offers an intuitive change in size and shape depending on the action you require. It can be extended horizontally and vertically as needed and can take up the entire display width when needed. Moreover, it maintains several tasks simultaneously.

Let&#;s say you are listening to some music track and have an ongoing Timer. In such cases, the island works as follows:

You have both apps displayed on the island. The Music bar will be visible on the pill-shaped zone, while the Timer will be shown in the near circle on the right.
You can hold any of the bars to select the desired action. Once you long-tap any icon, you will see a wider selection of functions in this exact app. Meanwhile, another icon wouldn&#;t be visible. But when you short-tap somewhere on a screen, both bars would be achievable again. This way, you can change the song without interrupting a timer count. The respective time will still be displayed on the island.
If you need to open the full-width version of any running apps, you can also perform it straight on the island. Just tap once again on the needed app bar after a previous long-press, and you are all set.

To cut a long story short, you can track your timer activity, pause it, or stop at all while switching to another playing song, pause music, or enter any app's full versions. This is an intuitive Dynamic Island&#;s shape-shifting.

The same shape transformation logic goes for other applications on your iPhone. Apple Pay payments, for instance, change the island's shape into a square to match the Face ID verification. During the ongoing call, it expands into a rectangle to access controls quickly.

Split Island functionality

The trick we mentioned above with the two-apps-simultaneous-depiction is based on TrueDepth system engineering. It exists in two separate cutouts merged through software, which helps to split the island into a pill on the left and a circle on the right. Both of the icons can demonstrate separate info at the same time without interfering with one another.

Dynamic Island Functions

Dynamic Island can demonstrate iPhone alerts and active tasks. As described above, you can mostly see such notifications in three states: small app icons on the island, an expanded window after a long press, and a full-screen app. Below you can find the lists of the supported notifications:

Dynamic Island Alerts

Face ID&#; unlocking
&#;Apple Pay&#; transaction confirmations
Find My notifications
AirDrop file transfer status
Privacy indicators for microphone or camera in use (green dot appears while the camera is on and orange while the microphone)
Low battery alerts
AirPods connection status and battery state
&#;iPhone&#; charging status
's silent mode (mute and unmute)
Car key (if it was added to your Apple Wallet) locking and unlocking
Airplane mode alert
Apple Watch unlocking
SIM card alerts
AirPlay connections
Focus mode changes
Shortcut acts
LED Flash alerts
Near-field communication (NFC) notifications

Dynamic Island Background Activities

Screen Recording
Currently playing music
Maps directions
Timer track
Voice memo recordings
Incoming call notification
call duration
Fitness scores
Personal Hotspot connection
SharePlay sessions

Besides, Dynamic Island supports some third-party apps, so you can interact with them the same way. For instance, CardPointers, GPS Tracks, Landscape, Lumy, Flighty, Forest, Liftin', Crouton, FotMob, Steps, SmartGym, Apollo, and others.

Dynamic Island Pros and Cons

Dynamic Island has benefits and drawbacks, as any relatively new feature. Let&#;s examine them:

Advantages:

You can view and interact with background tasks.
You receive timely updates on the ongoing activity progress.
Unlocking your iPhone triggers it to appear without any additional actions.
Several activities are visible simultaneously.
It is an interactive shape-and-size-changed area.

Disadvantages:

It&#;s impossible to turn off the feature fully.
There is no way to modify the time a particular notification remains visible before disappearing.
Accessible only on the iPhone 14 Pro and the latest models.
Leads to front camera blurriness since you constantly tap on the island where the camera is.
It is not fully optimized for all third-party apps.

Conclusion

Dynamic Island is one of the most recent iPhone interface updates. This feature was first introduced on the iPhone 14 Pro models as an ongoing display activity from your 's background tasks. As for now, all of the iPhone 15 line support Dynamic Island. This interactive hub helps you to keep track of the important notifications directly from your iPhone, or the supported activities such as current music play or sports scores. All in all, it is an intuitive alert center that comes in handy on a daily basis. Although, it is still not supported by a lot of apps.

Do you want to enhance your iOS users' experience? Make your app stand out by enabling the Dynamic Island activity access. Arounda team is here to help you! Drop us a line to gain more with the ultra-modern UI design!

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Notch No More: How to Use the Dynamic Island on ...

The notch at the top of the iPhone has been a familiar sight for the past several generations. But other than housing the True Depth front camera, the notch is wasted space that eats into your screen. To make that space more useful, Apple has turned the notch into an interactive feature called the Dynamic Island for the latest iPhone models.

The Dynamic Island was only available on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, but it is now available on all iPhone 15 models. The feature doesn't need to be enabled or configured for the Dynamic Island to do its job; it automatically kicks in when your is unlocked and any supported activity is running. Here's how to use the Dynamic Island, and what it can do to enhance your iPhone experience.

What Can the Dynamic Island Do?

The Dynamic Island can display notifications for Apple Pay transactions, low battery warnings, AirDrop transfers, Apple Maps directions, incoming calls, music being played, SharePlay sessions, and screen recordings.

The feature even works with a variety of third-party apps to display relevant information, including Carrot Weather, Flighty, Google Maps, Pestle, SmartGym, and more.

In many cases, you can press down on the Dynamic Island to open the activity in a larger window. In other cases, you&#;re able to tap the Dynamic Island to launch the activity in its full-screen app. You can also swipe on it to expand or contract the window. Here are several examples of how this works.