You Can Finally Improve Your IPhone’s Always-on Display
iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max feature Always-On Display (AOD), which lets you check the time without activating the entire screen. This feature is nice (albeit a few years behind Android), but its implementation was a bit lacking as it didn’t allow for the wallpaper to be completely hidden. Instead, Apple’s approach has been to display darkened lock screen wallpapers. It looks good, but in practice it can lead to worse battery life – plus, it’s easy to mistake an AOD dimmed screen for your iPhone actually being awake. In general, some kind of mess.
However, that has changed with the release of iOS 16.2 beta 3. You can finally decide if you want to see your wallpapers (and notifications) on your iPhone’s AOD instead of having Apple decide for you. Since iOS 16.2 is still in beta, you will need to register your iPhone with Apple’s beta program to try it out. Please be aware, however, that the beta software is not complete, which means that it is unreliable: if you need to uninstall the software for any reason, you may lose your data, so we do not recommend installing the beta software on your primary device.
To use this feature on an iPhone 14 Pro or 14 Pro Max running iOS 16.2, go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Always On Display and you’ll see two new options: Wallpaper and Notifications . To extend battery life, turn off Wallpaper.
If you want to minimize distractions and maximize your battery life, you should disable both of these options. So your iPhone’s AOD feature will show you the date and time and nothing else. This is a relatively small change that makes the feature more subtle.
iOS 16.2 is expected to release in the coming weeks, so you can always wait if you don’t want to mess around with beta software right now. In the meantime, you can always try this hack to fix the shortcomings of the AOD feature on your iPhone. This alternative method involves creating a focus mode to get the job done, and it’s amazingly effective.