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Shortly before its launch, Apple has revealed which apps are already taking advantage of the iPhone Duo's large internal display. The list ranges from Netflix and Instagram to a cassette player. However, some of these apps won't be available until the coming weeks.
In a post on the Apple Newsroom, Apple unveils the first apps and games adapted for the iPhone Duo. The post lists nearly 60 titles by name, categorized into entertainment, productivity, creativity, games, everyday life, and regional apps from China, Korea, Europe, and Latin America.
Starting Friday, the App Store will feature dedicated collections for the iPhone Duo. Adapted apps will display the "Made for iPhone Duo" badge on their product page. Further updates are expected throughout the year.
Key Facts at a Glance
- Apple lists nearly 60 apps and games that are adapted for the iPhone Duo or will soon be.
- Adapted apps can be identified in the App Store by the "Made for iPhone Duo" badge.
- Microsoft Word and Outlook, Zenless Zone Zero, UnGodly and DoorDash will follow after the sales launch.
- With Split View, two apps can run side-by-side on one iPhone for the first time on the iPhone Duo.
- The cassette player Duo-Man is now called Deck-Man and is available in the German App Store.
What Apple promises at launch
According to Apple, both displays of the iPhone Duo have the same aspect ratio. Therefore, when you unfold the phone, an app switches from the outer to the inner display and appears there at the same size, allowing you to pick up right where you left off. Apple states that the inner display is 50 percent larger than that of the iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Susan Prescott, Apple's developer relations manager, describes the response as follows:
The iPhone Duo is generating a great deal of interest in the developer community. It's impressive how quickly developers have adopted the larger display and the new possibilities for interaction.
According to Apple, more than 2,000 developers participated in over 50 workshops in 19 cities. Apple provides new interfaces in the iOS 27.1 SDK for this adaptation, including a hinge API that responds to the opening angle. Apps using standard SwiftUI and UIKit components will automatically adapt to any display, according to Apple.
Streaming and games
Netflix lets you browse clips on the outer display and continue playing them on the inner display, with clips switching between portrait and landscape orientation. Prime Video, when half-folded, shows the video at the top and details about the cast and bonus content at the bottom. Paramount+ brings more playback controls and an enhanced search function. It also includes Apple TV and the MLB and PGA Tour apps.
Apple lists Asphalt Legends with over 350 cars as one of the games, along with the Apple Arcade titles Sneaky Sasquatch and Retrocade. The performance figures Apple uses to promote these games are compared to last year's model: the iPhone Duo is said to deliver up to 35 percent higher sustained performance than the iPhone 17 Pro, not the current iPhone 18 Pro.
Work, creativity and everyday life
With Split View, the iPhone Duo opens two apps side-by-side on an iPhone for the first time. Zoom shows shared content and participants simultaneously, while Slack displays the entire workspace. Fantastical, Things, Bear, Notewise, and Salesforce utilize the larger area for calendars, tasks, notes, and dashboards.
Instagram displays more posts and stories at once, while the video editing app Edits shows the complete timeline along with its tools. Detail runs AI models directly on the device and displays video and transcript side-by-side. Apple cites NYT Cooking, OpenTable, Yelp, Flighty, American Airlines, and United Airlines as examples of apps that can be used in everyday life.
From Europe, Apple highlights three apps: the AirMail mail client, the Craft note and document app, and the Tiimo daily planner, which offers a compact view when folded and a visual timer when unfolded.
These apps will be available later
Not everything in the announcement will be ready for the sales launch on Friday. Apple has explicitly announced five titles for later release.
| App | Announced for |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Word | in the coming weeks |
| Microsoft Outlook | in the coming weeks |
| Zenless Zone Zero | Update next month |
| UnGodly | Available in the App Store from November |
| DoorDash | later this year |
Duo-Man becomes Deck-Man
Among the independent developers, Apple mentions Deck-Man, a cassette player: open it, select an album, insert a cassette, close it, and music from Apple Music starts playing. This is the app that originated as Duo-Man at Vidit Bhargava's hackathon at the end of September. Bhargava renamed it because it is now intended to offer a unique experience on other devices as well.
Deck-Man costs a one-time fee of €5.99 in the German App Store and also runs on iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro. The app is only available in English.
The badge says more than the list
For users in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, this list is only a selection. A significant portion of the mentioned services are geared towards the US market, such as Lowe's, DoorDash, and Lyft, and there are separate sections for China and Korea. The "Made for iPhone Duo" badge is more useful because it indicates across the entire App Store which apps are actually optimized for iPhone Duo.
Apple has given developers until April 2027 to implement this: From then on, every submitted app must include screenshots for the iPhone Duo. While this isn't mandatory, I expect many developers to comply by then, as screenshots of an app with borders look poor on the product page.
Which app absolutely needs to be customized on your iPhone Duo for you to use it in everyday life? Let us know in the comments which one you're most eagerly awaiting.
