14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest changes to happen on the iPhone 8 is the removal of the Home button for an edge-to-edge display, and this means that Apple must rethink some of the features to make them work without a physical button.
And it looks like the company already has a plan to deal with the demise of the Home button and it all comes down to gestures. Videos discovered by developer Guilherme Rambo in iOS 11 betas show how gestures would work on the iPhone 8, with certain features, like the app switcher, now easily accessible without a Home button.
In the existing betas of iOS 11, Apple removed the 3D Touch app switcher feature that worked by hard pressing the left side of the screen, and with the debut of the iPhone 8, the double-tapping the Home button won’t be available either, mostly because the Home button itself will go away.
Copying a jailbreak tool
So to launch the app switcher, iPhone 8 users will have to swipe up from the bottom of the screen, just like they do right now to access the Control Center. As a result, Apple had to remap the Control Center as well, and one of the videos included in iOS 11 betas show that accessing its features will be possible by swiping right from the lock screen, which has until now been used to invoke the camera.
Jailbreak fans might find this new behavior pretty familiar, and it happens for a reason: this is a feature of Zephyr, a popular jailbreak tweak that’s been around for many years, and which Apple appears to copy for a Home button-less iPhone 8.
As Rambo states, however, the existence of these two videos in the current beta versions of iOS 11 are not confirmation this is exactly how the whole thing is going to work.
The two videos have been there in beta versions from the very beginning, and this could be a sign they were just prototypes of the new app switcher, so certain tweaks could still be implemented before the final release.
This is interesting 🤔 pic.twitter.com/X4GLiMy1c5 — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 21, 2017
This is also interesting pic.twitter.com/JdYDhZDkev — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 21, 2017