Leaked iOS code reveals new details about the iPhone 8's home button (AAPL)

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August 10, 2017 11:52 AM

The area will not host anything but the resizable home button, but there will still be plenty of real estate.

The iPhone 8's home button will take the entire bottom portion of the screen — but evidence in the code shows that it can be resized.

iOS developer Steven Troughton Smith tweeted on Thursday some of his new discoveries about the iPhone 8's virtual home button, AppleInsider first reported.

Troughton looked through the leaked iOS code, which comes once again from the unreleased HomePod's firmware.

He found "API evidence" that the iPhone 8's display will host a virtual home button that can be resized or hidden entirely in accordance with the app that is open in a specific moment.

The virtual button will likely sit in the middle of the function area, but the screen portions at the sides don't look like they will host anything but essentially blank space.

"There is no evidence to suggest any app UI moves to the home button area at all," said Troughton Smith. "No toolbars, no other junk." However, there is still quite a lot of real estate to work with.

You can expect games or videos to take advantage of the entire display, with the home button disappearing like other user interface (UI) elements (like the status bar at the top) and playback video controls already do.

What happens when apps that use a bottom navigation bar (or any UI element pinned to the bottom) are opened on the iPhone 8 is that the blurred background will likely extend into the home button's function area, according to Troughton.

His findings suggest that Apple hasn't programmed any way to change the function area's color, which led him to think that it will always blend with the current app's UI to form a big, unified function area.

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