A look at how Dynamic Island works in iPhone 14 Pro

This week, Apple officially announced iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. While the exterior design looks much like previous iPhones, the 14 Pro models feature a new screen design with Dynamic Island — a notch at the top of the screen that replaces the notch with smart features. Read as we explain in detail how this feature works in practice.

This story is powered by MosyleApple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that fully integrates five different apps on just one Apple platform, allowing businesses and schools to easily and automatically deploy, manage, and protect all of their Apple devices. More than 35,000 organizations leverage Mosyle’s solutions to automate the deployment, management, and security of millions of Apple devices every day. Request a free account today And find out how you can put your Apple fleet on autopilot for a price that’s hard to believe.

In terms of hardware, the iPhone 14 Pro display has two separate slots: one for the Face ID sensors and one for the front camera. However, Apple chose to use an OLED panel to make this area appear to be cut into a single grain by default. However, Dynamic Island can do more than that, as the class switches to larger cards that act as tools.

Apple worked on many different apps for Dynamic Island, and we were able to reproduce them thanks to the iPhone Simulator – a tool that allows developers to try iOS apps right on a Mac.

How does Dynamic Island work

The only thing that is impossible not to notice is how smooth the animations in Dynamic Island are. When you close an app that supports Dynamic Island, it goes directly to it. The separation becomes larger depending on the action the application offers. For example, when you set a timer, the iPhone displays real-time progress at the top of the screen.

A long press on Dynamic Island expands the app’s widget with some basic controls. For timers, you can pause or stop them directly from Dynamic Island. The same goes for apps like Music and FaceTime. Some system actions like enabling focus mode or putting iPhone in charger also trigger animations on Dynamic Island.

One of the less detailed behaviors of Apple that we can see now is how Dynamic Island handles Picture-in-Picture videos. Unsurprisingly, you can’t drag a PiP window over a class. And even when you have a PiP window at the top of your screen, expanding Dynamic Island automatically moves the content down.

Dynamic Island can display more than one app at a time. The app you used recently will be the highlight, but you can also extend the alternative actions to Dynamic Island without having to go back to the app. There is also a light shade tinted with a distinct color for the app that shows live activity.

Once you open a video, Dynamic Island reverts to its default layout without any additional icons. Even if you click on it, nothing will happen. In general, the system works well – and Apple has created an API so that developers can also take advantage of Dynamic Island.