Let’s get this out of the way: You can’t actually hide the Dynamic Island on your iPhone. It is, after all, a physical cutout for the front-facing camera and the Face ID tech. But what you can do is hide all the software features that are around the Dynamic Island—the dynamic part of it.
Usually, Apple is quite good about not making this an annoying experience. The AirPods popup, for example, shows up and disappears gracefully. But there will be times when something is stuck up there on the screen: the album art for the music playback, the waveform for podcasts, and the countdown for your food delivery. Seeing these plastered at the top of your screen all the time can be quite annoying. Thankfully, there’s a way out. Two, in fact.
How to quickly hide the Dynamic Island elements on iPhone
If you want to hide animations, or app icons from the Dynamic Island, all you have to do is to swipe horizontally, left or right, on the Dynamic Island itself, to hide the activity.
Swipe horizontally again, and boom: Live Activity is back. You can tap and hold the Dynamic Island to bring up the Live Activity window where you can control playback. Tap on the Dynamic Island and it will open the corresponding app.
How to disable Live Activities for Dynamic Island
Because so many native features depend on the Dynamic Island, there is no way to turn it off. But it’s possible to do it on a per-app basis. Let’s say you don’t like seeing your Uber Eats countdown, or the podcast playback at the top. In that case, disable the Live Activities feature for that particular app, and it won’t show up in the Dynamic Island, or on the Lock Screen.
To do this, open the Settings app and choose the app you want to disable the activity for. Here, choose Live Activities and disable the Allow Live Activities feature.
That’s it! No more annoying updates on the Dynamic Island. Now, if you’re bothered by the Dynamic Island appearing in your screen recordings, there’s a fix for that, too.
