Phone and tablet makers have been finding ingenious ways to put those devices to use when they’re not in your hands. Take Google, which turns its Pixel Tablet into a quasi-smart display when it’s attached to its magnetic speaker dock, and now Apple is doing something similar with StandBy mode on the iPhone.
I’ve been playing with StandBy, which is slated to arrive today in Apple’s iOS 17 update, for about a week, and I’ve been surprised how much I’ve enjoyed it. Now, instead of sitting on my bedside charging stand with a blank screen as I’m dozing off or waking up, my iPhone can display a clock, my schedule, current weather conditions, snapshots from my iCloud photo library, or even (somewhat limited) controls for my smart home.
Getting StandBy mode up and running on your iPhone (it’s supported on any iPhone model that can run iOS 17, although it works best with the “always-on” display on the iPhone 14 Pro and 15 Pro) is easy, and it works whenever your iPhone is locked and charging (either wired or wirelessly, no MagSafe needed) in an upright horizontal position.
The mode is actually on by default (or at least it was during the most recent public beta of iOS 17), and you’ll see a welcome screen for the mode as soon as you lock your iPhone and place it upright and horizontal. You can enable and disable StandBy from the main iOS Settings menu (Settings > StandBy).
StandBy offers three different modes: A widget mode, with two half-screen widgets sitting side by side; a photo frame mode; and a full-screen clock mode. To switch between the three, you simply swipe from left to right or right to left.
The widget mode is the one that’s most reminiscent of a traditional smart display. You can choose from more than two dozen widgets, ranging from battery status (including for your other connected Apple devices, like AirPods and Apple Watches) and calendars to photos and weather. There’s also a Home widget that displays four interactive Apple Home controls; these can be automatically suggested by the Home app, or you can assign four devices of your choosing.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
You don’t need to pick just one widget per side of the screen; instead, you can pick multiple widgets for each side, which you can then scroll through with a swipe. A “Smart Rotate” option will automatically flip through your widgets according to Apple’s secret sauce, if you wish.
Cutting to the chase, the Home widget will be disappointing to anyone hoping that iOS 17’s StandBy mode would turn your iPhone into a full-on smart device control panel–it doesn’t. You only get access to the four buttons, and if they’re lights, you can’t adjust the brightness without unlocking your iPhone first. So yes, there’s smart home control via StandBy, but it’s extremely limited.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
That said, I found the clock widget to be handsome (you can pick from seven analog clock faces, plus a world clock), and I liked having it next to either the calendar (another attractive widget) or the photo widgets, in particular. Come to think of it, the weather widget looked pretty slick, too.
Swipe to the left from the widgets screen and you’ll arrive at StandBy’s full-screen photo mode, You can set the photo mode to display images from “featured” images in iCloud Photo, nature shots, pictures of cities, or people. A clock is displayed in the top-right corner, along with an occasional photo caption in the bottom corner.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Depending on the image, StandBy may also turn on the Ken Burns effect. Overall, it’s the kind of photo frame functionality you’d expect from a smart display, and I appreciated that StandBy knew better that to display portrait-orientation pictures blanked by blurred bars (a pet peeve of mine from Amazon’s Echo Show displays).
Swipe toward the left again and you’ll come to the clock mode. Five clock faces are available: analog, digital, a world clock (which shows a Larry King Live-style representation of the continents), Solar (a subtle numeric font with gauzy colors in the background), and Floating (big balloon style numerals that rock back and forth ever so slowly).
Ben Patterson/Foundry
There’s also a fourth mode that can be enabled if media (from Apple Music or another source) is playing on your locked phone, or if you’ve selected an actively playing AirPlay 2 speaker from Control Center.
In that situation, a small bubble with animated levels will appear at the top of the screen; tap it, and you’ll get a screen with album art on the left and media controls on the right, plus album and track information. If you happen to have a phone charger next to your HomePod, StandBy’s media screen makes for a nice way to keep tabs on what’s playing.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
The StandBy screen reacts to motion, turning itself off after a period of no activity and then snapping back on when motion is detected. It’s also sensitive to ambient light, tinting the screen red when the room is dark to preserve your night vision. (You can adjust this behavior from the Settings menu.) The motion and red-tint features make a StandBy-enabled iPhone an ideal bedside companion.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Does StandBy turn your iPhone into a smart display? Not to the level of an Amazon Echo Show or a Google Hub Display, but it certainly adds some smarts to your iPhone’s display, along with giving it much more utility when it’s just sitting in its charger.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer, TechHive
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he has covered everything from smart speakers and soundbars to smart lights and security cameras. Ben's articles have also appeared in PC Magazine, TIME, Wired, CNET, Men's Fitness, Mobile Magazine, and more. Ben holds a master's degree in English literature.