iPhone 14 Pro's always-on display will reportedly borrow a vital privacy feature from Apple Watch

iOS 16 Home App Widget (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple's iPhone 14 Pro will benefit from an always-on display.
Apple will reportedly borrow a privacy feature from Apple Watch to protect information.
Private information won't be available via the always-on display if configured not to do so.

Apple's upcoming iPhone 14 Pro could be about to borrow a big privacy feature from the latest Apple Watches, according to a new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Writing in hos weekly Power On newsletter, Gurman says that the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro will come with a new always-on display feature, as has been previously rumored. But Gurman has now elaborated on how that will work, saying that the iPhone will display the same widgets that were announced as part of the iOS 16 refresh earlier this month. On new iPhones, those widgets will appear on the Lock Screen and when the device is powered down, giving people a glanceable look at whatever those widgets display.

The main new feature—as first previewed here before iOS 16 was announced—is the revamped lock screen. The company has been working on this interface for a couple of years, and it makes sense to release it now because the lock screen works hand-in-hand with a new feature on the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro models: an always-on display.

Gurman goes on to say that the new iPhone 14 Pro devices will hide sensitive data from the Lock Screen when a setting is enabled, similar to how the Apple Watch Series 5 and newer handle information on their own always-on displays.

Like the Apple Watch, the iPhone 14 Pro will be able to show widgets displaying weather, calendars, stocks, activities and other data while the screen remains at a low brightness and frame rate. And there will be a setting—also like the Apple Watch—that keeps sensitive data from appearing on the lock screen for all to see.

We already knew that you'll need to buy the best iPhone of the year to get the new always-on capabilities, but the addition of privacy-first features will be welcomed by those concerned about the information their Lock Screen could inadvertently make available to the world.

While Apple is yet to confirm the iPhone 14 lineup, expectations are high that it will do so in or around September with four new devices entering the market. Until then, iPhone 13 and the rest of the lineup remains the iPhone to get.

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Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.