Apple released the third developer beta of iOS 11 yesterday, and we noticed a curious addition to the new screen capture functionality: There’s now a “Start Broadcast” button, possibly intended for sharing your screen during a livestream.
I say “possibly” because it doesn’t really do anything right now. If you tap on the button, it does exactly the same as pressing the screen recording button. It just saves a video file onto your camera roll.
Some have suggested it’s meant for AirPlay, but that doesn’t make much sense. There’s already an AirPlay mirroring button in the Control Center, so adding it onto the screen recording function seems redundant. If it were some new AirPlay feature, Apple would have used the AirPlay logo.
Our guess is the button is meant for third party apps which want to leverage the new screen capture functionality. In theory, you’d be able to share your screen to a YouTube or Facebook livestream after pressing the button. It’s also possible Apple has some new livestreaming app or functionality on the way, but I feel like Apple would have announced those features at WWDC if that were the case.
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Again, this is mainly conjecture. We won’t know for sure until the button actually begins to do something in a future build, but third party livestreaming strikes us as the most likely option. What do you think?
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