Leaked iOS code reveals new details about the iPhone 8's home button (AAPL)

iPhone 8 VHB

iOS developer Steven Troughton Smith tweeted on Thursday some of his new discoveries about the iPhone 8's virtual home button, AppleInsider first reported.

Troughton looked through the leaked iOS code, which comes once again from the unreleased HomePod's firmware.

He found "API evidence" that the iPhone 8's display will host a virtual home button that can be resized or hidden entirely in accordance with the app that is open in a specific moment.

The virtual button will likely sit in the middle of the function area, but the screen portions at the sides don't look like they will host anything but essentially blank space.

We know some facts re iPhone 8 home button area:

• it resizes
• indicator can be hidden
• no API to change color
• tab bars extend under it
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 10, 2017

"There is no evidence to suggest any app UI moves to the home button area at all," said Troughton Smith. "No toolbars, no other junk." However, there is still quite a lot of real estate to work with.

Props to @charavel for a quick mockup taking these numbers into account. This is what I expect usable screen space to look like on iPhone 8 http://pic.twitter.com/wyCmfHtusO
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 10, 2017

You can expect games or videos to take advantage of the entire display, with the home button disappearing like other user interface (UI) elements (like the status bar at the top) and playback video controls already do.

What happens when apps that use a bottom navigation bar (or any UI element pinned to the bottom) are opened on the iPhone 8 is that the blurred background will likely extend into the home button's function area, according to Troughton.

Red = New New iPhone “function area” and status bar.
Blue = Current iPhone 7 content area.
Yellow = Minuscule extra content space. 😕 http://pic.twitter.com/cppfZWTMwb
— Matt Bonney (@Bonney) August 8, 2017

His findings suggest that Apple hasn't programmed any way to change the function area's color, which led him to think that it will always blend with the current app's UI to form a big, unified function area.

very simply, that tab bar backgrounds extend beyond their regular bounds outside of the 'safe area' http://pic.twitter.com/MkOxxKIhIK
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 10, 2017

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