Exploring the Bright Side of iOS 15’S New Flashlight – The Reasons I Admire Apple Even More

Key Takeaways

• iOS 18 brings a revamped flashlight UI with adaptive controls for light spread and a polished user experience.
• iPhone 14 Pro and 15 Pro users can adjust light width and intensity with smooth finger gestures, providing fine-graded control in complete darkness.
• The new flashlight interface is a good example of Apple’s attention to detail and focus on elegant UI design when implementing new features.

Starting with the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple introduced Adaptive True Tone flash which allows the Camera app to control the spread of light when taking photos. These smart capabilities are coming to iOS 18’s thanks to an overhauled flashlight UI.

It’s the Little Details That Matter

iOS 18 supercharges your iPhone’s flashlight feature with a gorgeous new user interface that smoothly pops out of the Dynamic Island at the top of the device. The flashlight icon animates elegantly as the LED lights turn on, resulting in a great effect that I can never quite get enough of.

No detail is too small for Apple’s designers. Rather than abruptly switching on and off, the iPhone’s LED light now gracefully fades in and out because no one wants to be blasted with full flashlight brightness in complete darkness.

The top-down depiction of a real-world flashlight in the interface is fully interactive, which permits you to adjust the light width for the first time and adjust intensity smoothly.

You can still turn the flashlight on and off by uttering the Harry Potter spells “Lumos” and “Nox” like in old iOS versions, a quirky little Siri thing we’re liking a lot.

Utilitarian Design With Apple’s Signature Polish

To adjust light spread or focus, drag a finger left or right. The onscreen beam and the solid curve adjust accordingly, becoming wider or shrinking as you drag the finger horizontally.

My biggest complaint with the old flashlight was lack of fine-graded control, with just four levels of intensity available via the Control Center . But here, I just drag my finger up and down to adjust the LED light’s brightness in smooth increments. What a time to be alive!

As the LED intensity changes, the flashlight icon in the interface goes from brighter to dimmer, and vice versa. The solid curve also responds to finger movement, moving closer and farther from the flashlight icon. The dotted curve denotes the maximum threshold.

It’s a simple yet effective interface. Anything that helps me fine-tune flashlight intensity in complete darkness gets a thumbs-up in my book. Bonus: You can drag a finger horizontally and vertically simultaneously to change light width and brightness in one fell swoop.

Going the Extra Mile With Flashlight

Other controls are intuitive, too. A tap on the interface toggles the flashlight. Hitting outside sucks the interface into the Dynamic Island area. To bring it back (with your adjustments remembered), tap the Dynamic Island again.

iOS 18 finally allows you to change the flashlight and camera shortcuts on the Lock Screen to your liking, and the same is true for iOS 18’s customizable Control Center .

Like before, you can assign the flashlight function to the Action button , use the flashlight feature in your Shortcuts automations, set flashlight as a Back Tap action , and even make your iPhone’s LED flash light up when you receive a notification .

The new flashlight experience is restricted to the iPhone 14 Pros and iPhone 15 Pros as the only models with Adaptive True Tone flash and Dynamic Island. We might see the feature trickle down to the standard iPhone with the release of the iPhone 16.

iOS 18 unleashes the full power of Adaptive True Tone flash when using the flashlight feature.

Early adopters can try the new flashlight UI by installing the iOS 18 Public Beta . Others will need to wait a few more weeks until Apple releases iOS 18 for public consumption this fall.