Never have I seen something so audaciously brilliant I actually summon a CEO to help make it a reality but Tim Cook… if you’re reading this, this lock-screen mirror definitely needs to ship on the next iOS build. Put together by Jakub Zegzulka, an ex-Apple, Meta, and OpenAI fellow, this tiny little feature is perhaps more important than FaceID itself!
How many times have you stepped out for a meeting with friends or for an interview, having no idea what you look like… or whether you’ve got food stuck in your teeth? You unlock your phone, open the camera app, and flip to the front-facing camera to do a quick vibe-check. It’s a 3-step process that absolutely doesn’t need to be a 3-step process. Instead, Zegzulka’s solution involves just long-pressing on the camera icon on the bottom right of your lock screen. That brings up a tiny window emerging off the dynamic island, giving you a quick preview of yourself. You can check your hair, fix your make-up, adjust your specs, run your tongue across your teeth, or just quickly check out that annoying zit that appeared at the wrong place and wrong time.
Designer: Jakub Zegzulka
Zegzulka didn’t outline much, except a quick video demo of this feature on Threads. Although that was enough to gather nearly 2K likes in just over a day. The Lock Screen Mirror isn’t an app. It’s just a quick interaction that lets you open the camera’s viewfinder right on your lock screen for checking your appearance. The tiny circular window is almost exactly the size of a make-up mirror, and the feature is legitimately handy, even for me as a guy who has fairly curly hair that needs to just be ruffled before I step out.
Heck, imagine going an entire hour on a date with spinach stuck in your teeth and them being polite enough to not point out. Instead, you just do a quick check, get that pesky piece of green stuck on your pearly whites, and you’re good to go. It’s such a tiny-yet-life-enhancing feature that Apple could totally ship with their next build. You’re NOT opening your camera app with this lock screen mirror function, just a preview. You could drag your finger up and have the app open like it traditionally does, but a feature like this would probably eliminate the need to, if all you need to do is see if you look good right before you meet your friends, your future boss, or the potential love of your life.
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