Oliver Haslam·

iPhone 8 Will Mute Notifications Automatically When User Is Looking At Screen

iPhone 8 will apparently mute notifications automatically whenever user is looking at the screen. Here are the details.

Apple’s HomePod in-home digital assistant is not due to go on sale until December, but it is already giving us so much. Following the release of the specific version of iOS that it is powered by, developers have been trawling through it to see what they can find.

We have already been given glimpses of what the unannounced iPhone 8 will offer thanks to HomePod, and now we have another possible glimpse at a feature that could debut with the device. If the findings are correct, the iPhone 8 may use its face detection system in order to know when it is being looked at and then silence incoming notifications accordingly.

The discovery, made by developer Guilherme Rambo makes references to the ‘TLAttentionAwarenessObserver’ class in the compiled source for HomePod. This is not code that has been used before, and judging by the name the belief is that this would allow an iPhone 8 to detect when it has a user’s attention.

In such cases the iPhone would theoretically mute incoming notifications in the belief that the user would see the notification banner instead, removing the need for an audible alert. This is of course far from confirmed functionality at this point, but Samsung already has a feature which allows its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices to prevent their screens from turning off if a user is looking at them, so this is very much technology that is already out there.

Of course, it is not beyond Apple to drop features before software and hardware officially releases, so even if this class does do what we think it might, there is no guarantee that the iPhone 8 will carry such a feature.

With the new flagship iPhone expected to be announced in the coming weeks though, we at least should not have to wait too long before we find out for sure.

(Source: @_inside [Twitter])

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