Apple tells app developers to design for two size classes, not for five poses. But the poses still decide where controls, sheets and content are allowed to sit on iPhone Duo, according to the design guidelines and Tech Talk videos Apple has published for its foldable so far.
Key facts
| Zone | Apple’s stated rule |
|---|---|
| Outer display | Offset content inside the safe area; only immersive, non-scrolling interfaces may center on the full screen |
| Near the hinge | The system automatically nudges interactive elements away from the fold; scrollable content is the one exception allowed to rest there |
| Toolbars and controls | Placed along the side of the device, sharing space with the status bar and Live Activities; anything that will not fit collapses into an overflow menu |
| Sheets, outer display | Presented with vertical controls |
| Sheets, inner display | Use horizontal bars instead |
| Sheets, folded | Slide over so they do not rest in the fold |
Apple names five poses on the product page; the design guide details two
Apple’s marketing for iPhone Duo names StandBy, landscape, portrait, seated and standing positions under the line “Anything’s posable.” Its developer-facing Tech Talk on adaptive layouts, by contrast, works through only two poses in any detail: the device partially folded like a book, where the hinge splits the inner display into a distant top region and a nearby bottom region, and the device propped on a table like a small tent, where the same split separates content meant to be viewed from a distance from controls meant to be touched up close.
| Pose | Where it is defined | What developers are told |
|---|---|---|
| StandBy | Product page | Not detailed in the developer guide as published |
| Landscape | Product page | Not detailed in the developer guide as published |
| Portrait | Product page | Not detailed in the developer guide as published |
| Partially folded, book-style | Developer video | Hinge splits the inner display into a distant-viewing region and a nearby-control region |
| Propped, tent-style | Developer video | Top region for content viewed at a distance, bottom region for interactive controls |
Two size classes replace five poses in the actual code
Rather than building a custom layout for each pose, Apple’s design guidance tells developers to work with just two size classes, compact and regular, plus standard layout margins and safe area insets. Because the same app can also appear at different dimensions through Split View multitasking or video Picture in Picture, Apple frames resizability as a requirement that goes beyond the fold itself.
Don’t miss the best of The Mac Observer
Set us as a preferred source and our Apple reporting ranks higher in your Google Search results and Discover feed — one tap, no account changes.
The inner display is not just a bigger outer display
Apple’s guidance encourages two-column layouts once an app has the inner display’s extra width, surfacing more of an app’s hierarchy at once the way a Split View interface would on a larger screen. A separate modifier lets a tab bar move to a sidebar placement specifically when the inner display is available, rather than keeping the same bottom tab bar an iPhone app would use on the outer display alone. Standard containers such as NavigationSplitView, UISplitViewController, TabView and UITabBarController are already adaptive enough to follow this pattern automatically, according to Apple’s own guidance, which is why Apple frames most of this work as adjusting existing layout tools rather than building new ones from scratch.
What Apple has not said
- No developer documentation yet for three of the five poses named on the product page: StandBy, seated and standing.
- No numeric hinge-angle threshold published for when a pose counts as “partially folded” versus fully open.
- No stated behavior for an app that hard-codes a portrait-only layout and never adopts size classes.
Five weeks before iPhone Duo ships on October 23, the design guide covers the hinge poses developers most need for layout and leaves the marketing poses undocumented for now. Compare the physical dimensions behind these poses on Apple’s iPhone Duo page and against how the two new iPhones compare.
