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Proposal: Capacitive swipe-based volume control integrated into iPhone frame
I would like to propose a design enhancement for future iPhone models: using the existing bottom-right antenna line (next to the power button area) as a capacitive “volume control zone” that supports swipe gestures. Today this line is a structural antenna break, but it is also located exactly where the thumb naturally rests when holding the phone in one hand. With a small embedded capacitive/force sensor, the user could slide their finger along this zone to control volume without reaching for the physical buttons. Why this makes sense: • Perfect ergonomic thumb position in both portrait and landscape • One-handed volume adjustment becomes easier for large-screen devices • Silent and frictionless vs. clicking buttons (useful in meetings / night mode) • Consistent with Apple’s recent move toward contextual hardware input (Action Button, Capture Button, Vision Pro gestures) The interaction model would be: • Swipe up → increase volume • Swipe down → decrease volume • (Optional) long-press haptic = mute toggle This could also enhance accessibility, especially for users with reduced hand mobility who struggle to press mechanical buttons on tall devices. Technically, this would be similar to the Capture Button (capacitive + pressure layers), but linear instead of pressure-based. It does not replace physical buttons, it complements them as a silent gesture-based alternative. Thank you for considering this as a future interaction refinement for iPhone hardware design.
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Design-Copycats Rejection
Hi, Since last week, I’ve been trying to publish the new version of my Voxel game, which aims to fix many bugs and significantly optimize the game. This update is very important for improving the overall quality of the game. Unfortunately, this version is not being accepted on the App Store due to a Design - Copycats issue related to guideline 4.1. I’ve tried everything to resolve the problem by changing the screenshots, app preview, description, game name, icons, and even all metadata that could cause issues in the build. But nothing seems to work. I keep receiving the same rejection just a few minutes after submitting my build for review. Here is the full warning message: —————— “Guideline 4.1 - Design - Copycats This app or its metadata appears to be misrepresenting itself as another popular app or game already available on the App Store, from a developer's website or distribution source, or from a third-party platform. Apps should be unique and should not attempt to deceive users into thinking they are downloading something they are not.” Next Steps Learn more about requirements to prevent apps from impersonating other apps or services in guideline 4.1. Revise the app to comply with these requirements. Once the app is fully compliant, resubmit the app for review. —————— Also I've already tried contaction the Apple Developer team but I got no answer. I don't know what to do. Thanks
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UISplitView with "sidebar" and Liquid Glass
I have a couple of (older) UIKit-based Apps using UISplitViewController on the iPad to have a two-column layout. I'm trying to edit the App so it will shows the left column as sidebar with liquid glass effect, similar to the one in the "Settings" App of iPadOS 26. But this seems to be almost impossible to do right now. "out of the box" the UISplitViewController already shows the left column somehow like a sidebar, with some margins to the sides, but missing the glass effect and with very little contrast to the background. If the left column contains a UITableViewController, I can try to get the glass effect this way within the UITableViewController: tableView.backgroundColor = .clear tableView.backgroundView = UIVisualEffectView(effect: UIGlassContainerEffect()) It is necessary to set the backgroundColor of the table view to the clear color because otherwise the default background color would completely cover the glass effect and so it's no longer visible. It is also necessary to set the background of all UITableViewCells to clear. If the window is in the foreground, this will now look very similar to the sidebar of the Settings App. However if the window is in the back, the sidebar is now much darker than the one of the Settings App. Not that nice looking, but for now acceptable. However whenever I navigate to another view controller in the side bar, all the clear backgrounds destroy the great look, because the transition to the new child controller overlaps with the old parent controller and you see both at the same time (because of the clear backgrounds). What is the best way to solve these issues and get a sidebar looking like the one of the Settings App under all conditions?
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Fous, FocusState and Architecture
I am currently struggling with resolving what appear to be competing design issues, and (while I may be just demonstrating my own ignorance) I would like to share my thoughts in the hope that you may have useful insights. For purposes of discussion, consider a large and complex data entry screen with multiple sections for input. For all of the usual reasons (such as reuse, performance management, etc) each of these sections is implemented as its own, separately-compiled View. The screen is, then, composed of a sequence of reusable components. However, each of these components has internal structure and may contain multiple focusable elements (and internal use of .onKeyPress(.tab) {...} to navigate internally). And the logic of each component is such that it has an internal @FocusState variable defined with its own unique type. So, obviously what I want is on the one hand, to provide a tab-based navigation scheme for the screen as a whole, where focus moves smoothly from one component's internals to the next component, and on the other hand ,to build components that don't know anything about each other and have no cross-component dependencies, so that they can be freely reused in different situations. And that's where I'm stuck. Since focus state variables for different components can have different types, a single over-arching FocusState passed (as a binding) to each component doesn't seem possible or workable. But I don't know how else to approach this issue. (Note: in UIKit, I've done things like this by direct manipulation of the Responder Chain, but I don't see how to apply this type of thinking to SwiftUI.) Thoughts?
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Swipe to go back still broken with Zoom navigation transition.
When you use .navigationTransition(.zoom(sourceID: "placeholder", in: placehoder)) for navigation animation, going back using the swipe gesture is still very buggy on IOS26. I know it has been mentioned in other places like here: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/796805?answerId=856846022#856846022 but nothing seems to have been done to fix this issue. Here is a video showing the bug comparing when the back button is used vs swipe to go back: https://imgur.com/a/JgEusRH I wish there was a way to at least disable the swipe back gesture until this bug is fixed.
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iOS 26 Liquid Glass not showing
I’m not seeing Liquid Glass on any standard components. A month ago around July 17th I ran our app and saw Liquid Glass on our tab view and various standard components. Those components have not been changed and yet I’m no longer seeing Liquid Glass in our app at all. Components that were previously liquid glass but now are not include TabView and back navigation buttons. I set the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility key explicitly to false but no luck. I was seeing this in Beta 7 and Beta 8 on a real device and on a sim.
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Clarification on UIDesignRequiresCompatibility Key and Liquid Glass Adoption
Dear Apple Developer Relations Team, We are currently reviewing the documentation for the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility Info.plist key. In the documentation, there is a warning that states: "Temporarily use this key while reviewing and refining your app’s UI for the design in the latest SDKs." However, in the adoption guide for Liquid Glass: Adopting Liquid Glass, we did not see any explicit requirement to force adoption of the Liquid Glass design. We have the Gojek app, which currently uses the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility key. To ensure long-term stability, we would like clarification on the following points: Future Support of the Key: Is it safe to continue using the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility key? Can you confirm whether this key will remain supported or if there are plans for it to be deprecated/removed in future iOS versions? Liquid Glass Adoption: Our app’s design guidelines do not align with the Liquid Glass style. Can you confirm that adoption of Liquid Glass is not mandatory, and that apps can continue to use their existing custom design guidelines without any restrictions? Compatibility with iOS 26: Are there any required changes we need to make to our existing views to ensure that the UI will continue to render as it does today on iOS 26 and beyond? We want to make sure we provide the best user experience while remaining compliant with Apple’s guidelines. Your clarification would help us plan our design and development roadmap accordingly. Thank you for your support and guidance.
Topic: Design SubTopic: General Tags:
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SSC Distinguished Winner here😃! I created the1st game 100 % using Apple Pencil to interact. Interested in joining our DC?
Hey everyone, I'm beyond excited to share that I've been selected as a Distinguished Winner in this year's Swift Student Challenge! 🎉 It all started last summer, in the middle of a Western Culture class. I was zoning out , and my attention drifted to the Apple Pencil in my hand. And then ,it hit me — this thing is literally a next-level game controller. Think about it: pixel-perfect precision, haptic feedback, multiple built-in sensors... Why aren't we using this for gaming? And that got me thinking — why have we spent the last 500 years treating the "pencil" as just a tool for creation, and not for play? Since graphite pencils were invented in 1564, we've had this incredibly natural way to interact with 2D and 3D space... and nobody's fully tapped into it for games. So, I did something about it. I built a game that's 100% controlled by the Apple Pencil yep, just the Pencil. I know what you're thinking: "How does that even work??" And honestly, I'd love to tell you... but I'm in the final stages of getting it onto the App Store, and it should be live within the next couple of weeks. So for now... 🤐😄 In the meantime, I've set up a Discord server for anyone who's curious about the gameplay, the design, or just wants to brainstorm ideas with me. If you're into creative controls, game design, or just want to hang — come join the conversation! [Join the Discord here!] https://discord.gg/5Rm8WKbekf Can't wait to share more soon!
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Avoid using a segmented control in a toolbar
Hi, in the Human Interface Guidelines, Apple writes: Avoid using a segmented control in a toolbar. Toolbar items act on the current screen — they don’t let people switch contexts like segmented controls do. Along with this image: Source I'm confused by this example. The screenshot seems to be showing a segmented control in a toolbar. Is this saying that the Phone app's All/Missed toggle is different from a segmented control? Under iOS 26 it seems to take a different style compared to a regular segmented control. If so, which component is used to create this filter? Could you please clarify the guidelines? Thank you.
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How To Position Controls With SwiftUI
I am coming from C#, where Forms and Controls are placed similar to Swift Storyboards. I have been trying to learn Storyboards, but keep running across tutorials regarding SwiftUI, and Storyboard examples are few. So the question becomes, "how do I position controls on a Form using SwiftUI?" See the example below. I have run across many videos that use either horizontal or vertical positioning of controls, but these examples are usually very simple, with items occupying only the center portion of the screen. I get stuck on examples that are more complicated. The example below only shows the controls for the upper part of a Form, with some type of textbox (Viewform) below making up the rest of the Form. How does one make more complicated placement of controls with SwiftUI?
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Why isn't Liquid Glass effect applied when using pyobjc?
I can compile this #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h> @interface AppDelegate : NSObject <NSApplicationDelegate> @property (strong) NSWindow *window; @property (strong) NSSlider *slider; @end @implementation AppDelegate - (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)notification { // Window size NSRect frame = NSMakeRect(0, 0, 400, 300); NSUInteger style = NSWindowStyleMaskTitled | NSWindowStyleMaskClosable | NSWindowStyleMaskResizable; self.window = [[NSWindow alloc] initWithContentRect:frame styleMask:style backing:NSBackingStoreBuffered defer:NO]; [self.window setTitle:@"Centered Slider Example"]; [self.window makeKeyAndOrderFront:nil]; // Slider size CGFloat sliderWidth = 200; CGFloat sliderHeight = 32; CGFloat windowWidth = self.window.frame.size.width; CGFloat windowHeight = self.window.frame.size.height; CGFloat sliderX = (windowWidth - sliderWidth) / 2; CGFloat sliderY = (windowHeight - sliderHeight) / 2; self.slider = [[NSSlider alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(sliderX, sliderY, sliderWidth, sliderHeight)]; [self.slider setMinValue:0]; [self.slider setMaxValue:100]; [self.slider setDoubleValue:50]; [self.window.contentView addSubview:self.slider]; } @end int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) { @autoreleasepool { NSApplication *app = [NSApplication sharedApplication]; AppDelegate *delegate = [[AppDelegate alloc] init]; [app setDelegate:delegate]; [app run]; } return 0; } with (base) johnzhou@Johns-MacBook-Pro liquidglasstest % clang -framework Foundation -framework AppKit testobjc.m and get this neat liquid glass effect: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4199493b-6011-4ad0-9c9f-25db8585e547 However if I use pyobjc to make an equivalent import sys from Cocoa import ( NSApplication, NSApp, NSWindow, NSSlider, NSMakeRect, NSWindowStyleMaskTitled, NSWindowStyleMaskClosable, NSWindowStyleMaskResizable, NSBackingStoreBuffered, NSObject ) class AppDelegate(NSObject): def applicationDidFinishLaunching_(self, notification): # Create the main window window_size = NSMakeRect(0, 0, 400, 300) style = NSWindowStyleMaskTitled | NSWindowStyleMaskClosable | NSWindowStyleMaskResizable self.window = NSWindow.alloc().initWithContentRect_styleMask_backing_defer_( window_size, style, NSBackingStoreBuffered, False ) self.window.setTitle_("Centered Slider Example") self.window.makeKeyAndOrderFront_(None) # Slider size and positioning slider_width = 200 slider_height = 32 window_width = self.window.frame().size.width window_height = self.window.frame().size.height slider_x = (window_width - slider_width) / 2 slider_y = (window_height - slider_height) / 2 self.slider = NSSlider.alloc().initWithFrame_(NSMakeRect(slider_x, slider_y, slider_width, slider_height)) self.slider.setMinValue_(0) self.slider.setMaxValue_(100) self.slider.setDoubleValue_(50) self.window.contentView().addSubview_(self.slider) if __name__ == "__main__": app = NSApplication.sharedApplication() delegate = AppDelegate.alloc().init() app.setDelegate_(delegate) app.run() I get a result shown at https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7da022bc-122b-491d-9e08-030dcb9337c3 which does not have the new liquid glass effect. Why is this? Is this perhaps related to the requirement that you must compile on latest Xcode as indicated in the docs? Why, is the compiler doing some magic?
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Windows Apple Music: how to enumerate the local library or export it? Is Library.musicdb documented / API available?
Environment Windows 11 [edition/build]: [e.g., 23H2, 22631.x] Apple Music for Windows version: [e.g., 1.x.x from Microsoft Store] Library folder: C:\Users<user>\Music\Apple Music\Apple Music Library.musiclibrary Summary I need a supported way to programmatically enumerate the local Apple Music library on Windows (track file paths, playlists, etc.) for reconciliation with the on-disk Media folder. On macOS this used to be straightforward via scripting/export; on Windows I can’t find an equivalent. What I’m seeing in the library bundle Library.musicdb → not SQLite. First 4 bytes: 68 66 6D 61 ("hfma"). Library Preferences.musicdb → also starts with "hfma". artwork.sqlite → SQLite but appears to be artwork cache only (no track file paths). Extras.itdb → has SQLite format 3 header but (from a quick scan) not seeing track locations. Genius.itdb → not a SQLite database on this machine. What I’ve tried Attempted to open Library.musicdb with SQLite providers → error: “file is not a database.” Binary/string scans (ASCII, UTF-16LE/BE, null-stripped) of Library.musicdb → did not reveal file paths or obvious plist/XML/JSON blobs. The Windows Apple Music UI doesn’t appear to expose “Export Library / Export Playlist” like legacy iTunes did, and I can’t find a public API for local library enumeration on Windows. What I’m trying to accomplish Read local track entries (absolute or relative paths), detect broken links, and reconcile against the Media folder. A read-only solution is fine; I do not need to modify the library. Questions for Apple Is the Library.musicdb file format documented anywhere, or is there a supported SDK/API to enumerate the local library on Windows? Is there a supported export mechanism (CLI, UI, or API) on Windows Apple Music to dump the local library and/or playlists (XML/CSV/JSON)? Is there a Windows-specific equivalent to the old iTunes COM automation or any MusicKit surface that can return local library items (not streaming catalog) and their file locations? If none of the above exist today, is there a recommended workaround from Apple for library reconciliation on Windows (e.g., documented support for importing M3U/M3U8 to rebuild the local library from disk)? Are there any plans/timeline for adding Windows feature parity with iTunes/Music on macOS for exporting or scripting the local library? Why this matters For large personal libraries, users occasionally end up with orphaned files on disk or broken links in the app. Without an export or API, it’s difficult to audit and fix at scale on Windows. Reference details (in case it helps triage) Library.musicdb header bytes: 68-66-6D-61-A0-00-00-00-10-26-34-00-15-00-01-00 (ASCII shows hfma…). artwork.sqlite is readable but doesn’t contain track file paths (appears limited to artwork). I can supply a minimal repro tool and logs if that’s helpful. Feature request (if no current API) Add an official Export Library/Playlists action on Windows Apple Music, or Provide a read-only Windows API (or schema doc) that surfaces track file locations and playlist membership from the local library. Thanks in advance for any guidance or pointers to docs I might have missed.
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hidesBottomBarWhenPushed is bugged on iOS 26
I am using a common UI pattern: UITabBarController as window root, each tab with a separate UINavigationController stack. I want the (bottom!) tab bar to be only visible when the user is at the root of the app and hide it when a detail page is opened. To do that, I used hidesBottomBarWhenPushed on any view controller that would be pushed on my navigation stacks and that worked fine in the past. But with iOS 26, I am seeing several issues: On iOS where when the bottom tab bar is used, when in a details page and navigating back, the tab bar becomes fully visible immediately instead of slowly animating in as it has been in the past. This is particular visible and annoying when using the "swipe to go back" gesture On iPad, the situation is even worse: On iPadOS 18, the tab bar appeared in the navigation controller's navigation bar - no matter if hidesBottomBarWhenPushed was set or not - fine. But now, with iPadOS 26, this top tab bar disappears when a child is pushed. Not only that, it disappears abruptly, without animation, and the Liquid Glass effect on the UIBarButtonItems is broken as well. There is no transition whatsoever, buttons are simply replaced with the new UIBarButtonItems of the pushed view controller once it became fully visible. It gets even worse when swipe-back navigating on iPadOS: As soon as the back transition starts, the tab bar becomes visible again (without animation), covering the title (view) of the UINavigationController. If the swipe-back transition is not completed the tab bar suddenly stays visible When the swipe-back transition is interrupted close to the end of the transition and it goes back to the pushed view controller, the top UIBarButtonItems are showing a visual glitch where the content (text or icon) stays on the area where the tab bar is, while their container (the glass effect) are on the vertically aligned to the title view. I am surprised that I have not found any similar reports of these problems, so I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong or using hidesBottomBarWhenPushed simply isn't recommended or supported any more.
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Icon for some menu items cannot be removed on macOS 26
create a sample XCode project using Objective-C and stroybook (xib) using latest XCode beta open MainMenu.xib, and select Main Menu → File → Print... remove the image like below 4. build it 5. run it on macOS 26 beta 7 6. The menu item "print.." still have "Image" Is there any way to remove image for one menu item. I have also tried NSMenuItem.image = nil, but still not work. The issue I met on my own app is that I cannot remove icons for "Zoom In", "Zoom Out" and many other menu items, which makes the menu items not aligned properly.
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