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Articles · Dynamic Island Post

What can the Dynamic Island actually do?

Radomir's profile picture By Radomir, who builds Pipnote
Published August 13, 2026

The short version

The Dynamic Island shows live, in-progress things: calls, timers, music, directions, deliveries, flights. Third-party apps can only reach it through Live Activities, which is why it sits empty so often. iOS 26 changed the interesting part: apps can now schedule a Live Activity to appear at a future moment, which turns the island from a status bar into a place where things can arrive.

What is the Dynamic Island?

It's the black pill around the front cameras at the top of recent iPhones, which iOS treats as a tiny second screen. Apple introduced it with the iPhone 14 Pro in 2022, replacing the notch. When something is happening, a call, a timer, a song, the island stretches to show it; press and hold and it expands into a small card with controls. When nothing is happening, it's just the camera cutout pretending to be smaller than it is.

Which iPhones have the Dynamic Island?

As of August 2026, per Apple's own list: iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, all iPhone 15 models, all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air.

Two commonly missed exceptions: the budget iPhone 16e and iPhone 17e do not have it. Both kept the notch, despite pre-launch rumors that the 17e would get the island. The regular iPhone 14 and 14 Plus don't have it either; in that generation it was Pro-only.

What shows up in the island on its own?

Out of the box, the island is driven by the system and Apple's apps: incoming calls and call duration, now-playing music, Clock timers, Maps directions, live sports scores, AirDrop transfers, charging status, Face ID, Apple Pay, AirPods connection, Personal Hotspot, screen recording and the privacy indicators. MacRumors keeps a thorough guide to the full list.

Notice what all of those have in common: they're things already in progress. The island was designed as a status surface, not an inbox, and that assumption is exactly what the newest APIs loosened.

What can third-party apps put in the island?

One thing only: a Live Activity, built with Apple's ActivityKit framework. A Live Activity is a glanceable card for something with a start and an end: a ride approaching, a flight boarding, a food order, a game score. It renders in three island sizes plus a Lock Screen view, can include buttons, and can be updated by push. The island shows at most two Live Activities at once, and each app can have up to five running or scheduled at a time.

What apps cannot do: park a permanent widget up there, draw arbitrary pixels, or show anything while nothing is live. Uber, Flighty, Spotify and DoorDash are the textbook adopters, and they all fit the same mold: track a thing until the thing is done.

What did iOS 26 change?

Two things that matter, one that doesn't.

Also useful to date correctly: Live Activities mirroring to the Apple Watch Smart Stack arrived earlier, with iOS 18 and watchOS 11 in 2024. And iOS 27, announced at WWDC 2026 and expected in September, adds landscape support for the island's Live Activities.

Why is the island empty most of the time?

Because very few apps have anything genuinely live to show. The complaint is as old as the hardware: Tom's Guide called it a letdown within weeks of launch, MacRumors forum threads still ask whether it's "basically pointless", and the most common defense is a list of the same five tracking apps. Rides, flights and food orders are occasional events; the island spends most of its day as an empty black pill.

Full disclosure: this is our corner of it

We build Pipnote on exactly the iOS 26 scheduling API described above, so we have an obvious stake in this argument. Our take: the island's best use was never tracking a burrito. It's the one place on the phone where something can visibly arrive. Pipnote sends short notes, sixty characters, written by you or someone who loves you, and at the chosen moment a small animal courier expands into the island holding the note. No accounts, no server; sent notes travel through your own Messages. It launches soon, free, and the waitlist gets exactly one email.

Join the waitlist

What's next for the Dynamic Island?

Confirmed: iOS 27 brings landscape Live Activities in the island and StandBy support while charging sideways. Rumored, and only rumored: the iPhone 18 Pro, expected in late 2026, is widely reported to move Face ID under the display and shrink the island to a small camera cutout. If that happens, Live Activities stay; it's the black pill that would change shape, not the software surface apps build on.

Questions people ask

Does the iPhone 16e or 17e have a Dynamic Island?

No. Both the iPhone 16e (2025) and the iPhone 17e (2026) kept the notch. Every other iPhone released since the iPhone 15 has the Dynamic Island, and on the Pro side it goes back to the iPhone 14 Pro.

Can apps put widgets in the Dynamic Island?

No. The only thing a third-party app can put in the Dynamic Island is a Live Activity, built with Apple's ActivityKit framework. There's no such thing as a permanent island widget, and the island shows at most two Live Activities at a time.

Can you turn the Dynamic Island off?

Not the island itself, because it's the physical area around the front cameras and it only displays something when an activity is live. What you can control is which apps are allowed to show Live Activities: Settings, then the app's name, then Live Activities.

Can a Live Activity start at a scheduled time in the future?

Yes, since iOS 26. Apple opened scheduled Live Activities to all apps, so a Live Activity can be set to appear at a specific future moment without the app being open. Before iOS 26, only Apple's own Sports app could do this. Scheduled delivery apps like Pipnote are built on exactly this.

Do Live Activities show on Apple Watch?

Yes. Since iOS 18 and watchOS 11, an iPhone's Live Activities automatically appear in the Apple Watch Smart Stack, mirroring the island's compact view unless the developer designed a custom watch layout.

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