Apple’s most recognisable design quirk is finally starting to fade out. The notch that arrived on the iPhone X almost a decade ago, later reworked into the Dynamic Island, is rumoured to take its biggest step towards retirement this autumn with the iPhone 18 Pro. The plan, according to the latest chatter, is a Dynamic Island that shrinks by around 35 percent as Apple keeps chipping away at the display cutout altogether.
It is worth remembering why the notch existed in the first place. When Apple went chasing an edge-to-edge screen with barely-there bezels on the iPhone X, something had to house the front camera and Face ID sensors, and the notch was the compromise. It became iconic almost by accident, and then spread to the Mac as well. Love it or loathe it, it has been a defining feature of Apple hardware for nearly ten years.
The company has always been good at hiding it in plain sight. Software touches like Live Activities do a clever job of making the cutout feel purposeful rather than like a gap someone forgot to fill. But no amount of software polish changes the basic truth that nobody actually wants a chunk taken out of their display. Apple knows this, which is why the direction of travel has only ever been one way.
The iPhone 14 Pro was the first real progress, swapping the fixed notch for the smaller, more flexible Dynamic Island. The iPhone 18 Pro looks set to be the next meaningful move. A 35 percent reduction would make the Island noticeably smaller and hand users a bit more usable screen in the process. There is even a supporting hint in iOS 27, where the design of the Siri AI interface appears to line up with a slimmer cutout.
What makes this more than a one-off tweak is that it is happening across the range rather than in isolation. The rumoured MacBook Ultra is expected to drop the notch in favour of a smaller Dynamic Island of its own, and next year’s iPhone 18e may follow the same path. Taken together, it reads less like a single design revision and more like the start of a coordinated wind-down.
Nobody should expect the cutout to vanish entirely just yet. Truly hiding the camera and sensors under the display is still a hardware challenge Apple has not fully cracked. But after years of the Dynamic Island staying more or less the same size, the iPhone 18 Pro finally moves the needle again. The notch’s retirement is not here, but it is a good deal closer than it was this time last year.
