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iOS 18 Lets You Swap Out Lock Screen Camera and Flashlight Buttons
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This is brilliant. I rarely use the flashlight during brighter evenings of summer. I will happily replace that with alarm or notes app.
Yes. FINALLY!!!! Something so simple should have been added years ago.
part of me will miss all the bizarre photos I’ve accidentally taken.
How do you do it?
Long press doesn’t trigger but the app itself
No options to choose appear
Im so annoyed
Long press doesn’t trigger but the app itself
No options to choose appear
Im so annoyed
I'm glad these are (finally) becoming customizable. What I am curious about, however, is whether or not the app will always be able to be used regardless of whether your iPhone is locked. If so, that's a problem...
I have flashlight on my action button just because I use it all the time. Can't wait to kill the lock screen shortcut for it.
Actually, that’s one thing I wish there was an option for; not to go into Lock Screen Customization Mode when I hold the Lock Screen for too long. Maybe in iOS 19
In part. For every option, you need to test it. That adds overhead.
In iOS 17, it's a check that the button turns on the flashlight.
In iOS 18, it's a check that the button does as it's expected. If there are 5 options in a drop down, that's 5 tests for that button. Plus another few tests for the dropdown, some tests that the view that shows the dropdown works, etc.
Then you need to make sure that a button to open an app, doesn't accidently override any security models that are in use. So more tests, in case you have an app that's hidden, or password protected, or installed via a corporate cert...
Off the top of my head, best guess is it's at least 25x the work for one feature.
The event specified that developers now have APIs to create controls that go into the Controls Gallery, so I don't think it's limited to first-party options. Developers just haven't built any controls yet.
Apple specifically showed a Snapchat one in the keynote so it must be a simple developer API to add it. It’s just that no devs have done that since the beta came out today and devs don’t get iOS 18 apps approved until the fall.
This is good, but what I'd really like is to have it go into some locked state when flashlight is on.
I can't even count the times I've turned on the flashlight and then it goes off, because it thinks I swiped to open the camera.
Or, I've turned on the flashlight and then when I'm done my background is changed, because the long press went into change background.
How many people are really trying to take a picture when they have the flashlight on? Wouldn't they open the camera and turn the flash on there?
How many people are using the flashlight and then decide - hey, I know I'm looking for something in the dark, but now would be a great time for me to change my background.
I can't even count the times I've turned on the flashlight and then it goes off, because it thinks I swiped to open the camera.
Or, I've turned on the flashlight and then when I'm done my background is changed, because the long press went into change background.
How many people are really trying to take a picture when they have the flashlight on? Wouldn't they open the camera and turn the flash on there?
How many people are using the flashlight and then decide - hey, I know I'm looking for something in the dark, but now would be a great time for me to change my background.
yay! Customisation! But only within the strict limitations and boundaries set by Apple! \o/
iOS 18 allows users to change the two shortcut buttons on the Lock Screen to an action of their choice for the first time.
Users can now swap out the two controls at the bottom of the Lock Screen for a different action of their choosing. Shortcuts to functions like Translate, Notes, and music recognition in Shazam, and more are available. The full list of actions is as follows:
These new controls can also be accessed via the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The ability to change these Lock Screen controls is part of a wave of new customization features in iOS 18, which includes app icon color-changing capabilities and more. The first developer beta of iOS 18 is now available, with the public beta set to follow in July and the official release scheduled for the fall.
Article Link: iOS 18 Lets You Swap Out Lock Screen Camera and Flashlight Buttons
Did anyone notice you can change your beam width on the flashlight now? Minus the arrows and text...
Yeah, but there’s also Lock Screen accessibility to consider. In all honesty, I’m probably not going to change either for that reason. What are the two functions I’d want to have available on the lock screen without unlocking my phone? Well, the camera is certainly one of them. I’ve got over a decade of muscle memory of taking my phone out and taking pictures without unlocking it first.
I usually carry a flashlight on me, so I don’t need to use my phone’s flashlight. But I’d probably still be more likely to use the flashlight on my phone than Shazam (and Shazam recognition looks like the most useful feature in that picture to have on the Lock Screen). It’s just super rare for me to go about my business and hear music that makes me go “I want to know what this is”. (Just today, a far more common reaction happened! I went shopping, and the store had music playing, and I tensed up and got in and out as quickly as possible. It was a song I recognized, I used to work at a gas station that had music playing on the store speaker system, and the song [some top-40 stuff from the late 2010s] was on rotation on the radio station. Some of that music is legit traumatic for me, that’s how awful of a job that was!)
For everything else on that list, it just isn’t that useful for me (or I’d probably use my Apple Watch instead, for instance, setting timers) or it just doesn’t make sense for me to use it without unlocking my phone. For instance, being able to open an app or run a Shortcut is powerful, but, if I’m going to do something like that, I probably need to unlock my phone anyway.
Well, to be fair, it’s a first beta. Bugs like that are still very common at this point. You should be reporting them to Apple via Radar or the Provide Feedback app. That is what these early betas are supposed to be for, after all! (What do you mean they’re not meant for you to brag to your friends about?!
)
Apparently, I’m old because I can’t even count on one hand the amount of times I picked up my phone and turned on the flashlight by accident