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The new flashlight control is the worst UI/UX from Apple in a while
- Thread starter CrysisDeu
- Start date
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I agree with some points but I think calling “this year’s iOS 18 quite a disaster” seems very dramatic.Hi everyone,
I’m starting a series of posts/threads to provide feedback (and rants) on various aspects of the iOS 18 UI. I’ll break them into three different posts for now:
I know iOS 18 is in beta and subject to change. And the changes are sometimes driven by user feedbacks. I will send the posts as feedbacks to Apple as well.
- the new flashlight dynamic island control (this post)
- the new Photos App (planning to write)
- the control center (planning to write)
Disclaimer: I am not a ‘professional’ UI/UX designer, in the sense that it’s not my main job, and I don’t earn a living from it. However, I have a passion for human-computer interaction and UI/UX. I’ve watched almost every design-related WWDC session over the past ~10 years, designed numerous UIs as side projects, and I’m a ‘full stack’ content producer using various design and editing software.
Why am I spending time (3 hours) writing this?
I’ve provided numerous feedbacks on previous iOS iterations as a beta tester, and many of them were implemented by Apple. This year’s iOS 18 is quite a disaster, with numerous poorly considered elements that violate basic design principles and are confusing to me. It’s wrong on so many levels that I’ve almost given up on providing feedback—there’s just too much to address! I have no idea how non-tech-savvy or elderly people will use this new iOS version, and I suspect the design inconsistencies will only worsen in the coming years.
I want to raise awareness with Apple about this ongoing design oversight, which has driven me and many others away as hardcore Apple fans who once admired their design philosophy. I hope to resonate with my fellow forum members who are core Apple users and potentially gain media coverage to push for change within Apple.
Topic for this post: the new flashlight control in dynamic island is badly designed
This is going to be a hot take: the new flashlight control is one of the most confusing UIs I’ve seen from Apple in at least three years—yes, even worse than the Safari redesign and the new Photos app.
I learned the new flashlight implementation is an intern project, and I really hate to hurt some intern engineer’s feelings—I wouldn’t want someone to trash my intern project. But at the same time, I hate to see this new implementation shipped to the general public. I don’t see how a normal user is going to understand how to control the flashlight with this new UI.
What's new about the flashlight control?
Let’s start with what’s new about the flashlight control before diving into what’s wrong with it. You might have seen videos about it already, as it gained a lot of popularity on social media. The reason it was popular?
When you click the flashlight control, instead of holding the control to adjust its brightness, the control now moves entirely to a new UI in the dynamic island.
- It utilizes dynamic island
- It has some cool animations
- You can control the spread of the flashlight with the new control
View attachment 2388401
The dynamic island UI will minimize itself after a second, leaving just a flashlight icon in the island.
To control the flashlight, you need to click on the dynamic island, then drag up/down to control the brightness and drag sideways to control the spread.
While it’s neat and flashy (pun intended) and works for social media posts, it’s absolutely abysmal for regular use. Let me explain:
What's wrong about this new design
Most user won't know they can control the flashlight with this new UI
First, many users won’t even know they can control the flashlight with this dynamic island implementation. Most of the dynamic island content, apart from music playback control, purely displays real-time information. Users don’t expect to interact with the dynamic island unless it explicitly shows buttons. There’s no way to expect them to drag the dynamic island to control a functionality.
Additionally, the flashlight UI only appears in an expanded state for a second before minimizing. How is a normal user supposed to know they can click the dynamic island to expand it and control their flashlight?
Need to reach to the top
This is plainly wrong! Across iOS, the dynamic island is mostly used for displaying information, but not for interaction. Why? Because it’s located at the least reachable part of your phone—the very top! You might manage to click a button like music playback control, but performing gestures on dynamic island content? That’s a real challenge.
Need two hands to adjust the flashlight
Since the dynamic island is at the top, you now need two hands to adjust the flashlight. But why should you? The worst time to require two hands for a simple task like controlling a flashlight is when you’re in the dark, trying to feel around or use a tool.
Why do you need to adjust the spread on a phone's flashlight?
Many people praise this new UI because it allows you to adjust the spread of the flashlight. While it makes sense for traditional physical flashlights, it makes zero sense on an iPhone. It’s change for the sake of innovation.
On a physical flashlight, adjusting the brightness controls the spread and focuses the light on a smaller area, making it brighter. An iPhone has no lens to adjust, so you’re not focusing a light source; it’s merely switching between inner and outer flash LEDs, each lighting up an inner or outer ring.
So, adjusting the spread doesn’t gain you any more brightness already availble. The spread control isn’t even accurate, and it doesn’t make much difference. It only makes it harder to light up all LEDs with maximum brightness.
Realistically, you only need brightness control on a phone’s flashlight.
There is no (or it's just bad) visual cue on how to adjust the flashlight
View attachment 2388402
Take at most 1 second to look at this UI (since it minimizes after a second on iOS 18). Tell me: what potential controls are available, and how are you supposed to control the flashlight?
I was so confused when I first used this:
There are so many questions that I had no idea how to answer when using this. I literally had to watch a YouTube video to understand that you just drag sideways to control the spread. It’s so poorly designed that you can’t understand it within a second.
- What is that bar on the top? It’s probably the spread because the light cone’s width matches it, but how do I change the spread?
- There is a tick on the left and right of the 'spread' bar, so do I pinch to adjust the spread?
- How am I supposed to pinch such a small element? Am I supposed to swipe?
- Does swiping to the left focus the light? Or does swiping to the right focus the light?
- What about the vertical bar on the right? What is that? Is that a draggable handle? It looks like the draggable handle you usually see on a bottom sheet.
- Nothing really seems to happen when I drag the vertical bar.
- How do I control the brightness of the flashlight?
The actual adjustment sucks
Usually, you learn how a control works after a few guesses with trial and error, but the actual adjustment here sucks! I couldn’t instantly tell what was happening because the adjustment is incredibly unpredictable!
Why is it bad?
The control is so bad and so unpredictable, making it even harder to learn how to use it.
- If you drag diagonally, the brightness and the spread change at the same time! Why would two changes happen with one gesture? They should lock on one axis and only change one control at a time.
- The UI lags behind your gesture because the control levels are discrete, not continuous. So you drag for a while, nothing happens, and then suddenly, both brightness and spread change simultaneously.
- The brightness and spread levels are discrete, but there’s nothing in the UI indicating how many levels there are and where the boundaries of each level are.
- If I want maximum brightness, which spread level should I choose? What if I don’t want to accidentally adjust the brightness level and just keep the brightest default?
The control patters collides with dynamic island's default controls
There are two swipe gestures you can do with Dynamic Island:
Now in the same small Dynamic Island, two of the gestures directly collides with the default controls available for other Dynamic Island controls. It makes me very uncomfortable to drag this UI to control the flashlight. I am afraid to minimize or dismiss the UI, because that's how it works everywhere else across the board.
- Drag up to minimize an expanded island
- Drag left to dismiss the content in the Dynamic Island
What do I propose
I have many ideas on how this UI could be improved while still utilizing the dynamic island. But I think it’s just a poor choice to have the entire control on the dynamic island. At most, they should embed a button toggle in the dynamic island to turn the flashlight on/off, like iOS 17 did (preferably with an actual button indicating it’s clickable). Given this thought, I won’t even present my suggestions for dynamic island-based changes.
There are really two choices:
Honestly, I don’t think the spread adjustment is needed on an iPhone. Just revert it to iOS 17, where the one-handed flashlight control was infinitely better than this current implementation.
If Apple insists on keeping the spread adjustment, fine, there are two ways to implement it elegantly:
Other than that, the new fancy animations are lit, the chromatic aberrations also adds a nice touch. I have nothing against it and I would like to see more such designs and details from Apple
- Keep the iOS 17 adjustment, and add a bottom segmented control group to adjust the spread. You know how you can adjust the transparancy mode of your airpods in the volume slider in control center? Spread adjustment should be implement like that, with three discrete levels to choose from (narrow, normal, wide)
- Remove manual spread adjustment and do it smartly. If the user selects the maximum brightness, turn all of the flash on. If they selects the minumum brightness, only turn the inner flashlight LEDs on a low brightness. The user really don't need to know the spread and how it's controlled. The simple flashlight on the iPhone should 'just work'.
Rant over! I am very glad if you read through this. How do you think about this?
I haven’t tried the flash, but the new single tab layout Photos app seems quite bad too and unfortunately affects my iPhone 12 Pro.
The option of the Safari address bar on the bottom should have been introduced back in 2014 when iOS 8 and iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced... I was so used to having the address bar at the top [that when the change happened, I seem to be against it] but it makes sense on bigger screens...
However, the change Apple made on iOS 18 Photos app [which I hate more than the change they did with Safari], unless majority of the feedback is against the change, it may end up as the final look which may be adopted by future iOS releases...