Apollo update turns iPhone 14 Pro's dynamic island into a home for 'Pixel Pals'

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max may have only arrived yesterday, but developers are already imagining fun and interesting use cases for Apple's new Dynamic Island interface. Take Apollo creator Christian Selig, for example. On Friday, he updated his Reddit client to implement support for "Pixel Pals." The feature adds a Tamagotchi-like creature that does cute things above your phone's dynamic island while Apollo is open. You can even choose between several creatures, including a cat, dog, hedgehog, fox or axolotl.

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If you don't have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, don't worry. You can also add the creatures to your phone as lock screen widgets, provided you have iOS 16 installed. On iPhone widgets, Google has teased one that will work as a shortcut to Chrome's Dino game.

Selig isn't the only person doing something creative with the iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, WaterMinder creator Kriss Smolka introduced Hit the Island, a game that uses the UI element for a game Pong-style. You can download it from the App Store. I can only speak for myself, but these apps are making me a little jealous, I'm still rocking an iPhone 12.

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