This way your iPhone gets the coolest iPhone 14 Pro function

January 16, 2023 Luisa Rey

If there’s one feature that characterizes the iPhone 14 Pro, it’s the innovative Dynamic Island. There is now a way to bring it to every iPhone – although that is quite a bit of work.

Read on after the ad.

Dynamic Island for all iPhones

The Dynamic Island is where Apple has housed the selfie camera and Face ID technology. But the island is more than a recess for the camera hardware: the iPhone displays all kinds of content, such as notifications and an interactive media player.

At the moment, the function is still exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, although an Italian developer is trying to change that. With new software – called DynamicCow – he brings the iPhone function to older iPhones, in the place of the notch.

Hooks and eyes

Sounds great, but unfortunately DynamicCow is not an app that you just download from the App Store. To get it working, you need to install software on your Mac via Github, which you use to get a third-party utility on your iPhone. This utility installs DynamicCow.

If you’re still excited, we’ll probably blow off the last bit by saying you’ll need to enter your Apple ID and password to install DynamicCow. In third-party software, that’s never a good idea. Moreover, it can only be downloaded if you do not have a recent iOS 16 version. The software only supports iOS 16 through iOS 16.1.2.

Still, it is interesting that it is possible, and our colleagues from 9to5Mac tried out the software. According to them, it does exactly what the developer describes: the Dynamic Island works exactly as we know it from the 14 Pro. And that is also the problem: the software does not take into account the notch of your device. This covers a large part of the island. In addition, there is a large red bar at the top of the screen if you have an iPhone 11.

In short: more a gimmick than a sensation. Incidentally, it looks like all iPhone 15 models will get a Dynamic Island. So also the non-Pro iPhones. The iPhone 15 series is likely to appear in September.