The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max may have only arrived yesterday but developers are already dreaming up fun and interesting use cases for Apple’s new Dynamic Island interface. Take Apollo creator Christian Selig, for instance. On Friday, he updated his Reddit client to implement support for “Pixel Pals.” The feature adds a Tamagotchi-like critter that does cute things on top of your phone’s Dynamic Island while you have Apollo open. You can even choose between multiple creatures, including a cat, dog, hedgehog, fox or axolotl.
Okay y'all, I think I found the best idea for the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro. I added a cat that lives up there like a tamagotchi and just hangs out and does cute stuff as you browse Reddit in my app (Apollo). pic.twitter.com/xJJlazHH4E
— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) September 16, 2022
If you don’t have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, don’t worry. You can also add the creatures to your phone as lock screen widgets – provided you have iOS 16 installed. On the subject of iPhone widgets, Google teased one that will function as a shortcut to Chrome’s Dino game.
Selig isn’t the only person doing something creative with the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, WaterMinder creator Kriss Smolka showed off Hit the Island, a game that uses the UI element for a Pong-style game. You can download it from the App Store. I can only speak for myself, but these apps make me a bit jealous I'm still rocking an iPhone 12.
Who has an iPhone 14 Pro right now? Need to test this on device asap!
🏝️ Hit The Island – our game concept for iPhone 14 Pro, still laggy but it’s turning out nice 🙂 #iPhone14Pro#iOS16pic.twitter.com/kWLU77gk6d
— Kriss Smolka (@ksmolka) September 13, 2022