At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for UI Frameworks. How would you recommend developers start adopting the new design? Start by focusing on the foundational structural elements of your application, working from the "top down" or "bottom up" based on your application's hierarchy. These structural changes, like edge-to-edge content and updated navigation and controls, often require corresponding code modifications. As a first step, recompile your application with the new SDK to see what updates are automatically applied, especially if you've been using standard controls. Then, carefully analyze where the new design elements can be applied to your UI, paying particular attention to custom controls or UI that could benefit from a refresh. Address the large structural items first then focus on smaller details is recommended. Will we need to migrate our UI code to Swift and SwiftUI to adopt the new design? No, you will not need to migrate your UI code to Swift and SwiftUI to adopt the new design. The UI frameworks fully support the new design, allowing you to migrate your app with as little effort as possible, especially if you've been using standard controls. The goal is to make it easy to adopt the new design, regardless of your current UI framework, to achieve a cohesive look across the operating system. What was the reason for choosing Liquid Glass over frosted glass, as used in visionOS? The choice of Liquid Glass was driven by the desire to bring content to life. The see-through nature of Liquid Glass enhances this effect. The appearance of Liquid Glass adapts based on its size; larger glass elements look more frosted, which aligns with the design of visionOS, where everything feels larger and benefits from the frosted look. What are best practices for apps that use customized navigation bars? The new design emphasizes behavior and transitions as much as static appearance. Consider whether you truly need a custom navigation bar, or if the system-provided controls can meet your needs. Explore new APIs for subtitles and custom views in navigation bars, designed to support common use cases. If you still require a custom solution, ensure you're respecting safe areas using APIs like SwiftUI's safeAreaInset. When working with Liquid Glass, group related buttons in shared containers to maintain design consistency. Finally, mark glass containers as interactive. For branding, instead of coloring the navigation bar directly, consider incorporating branding colors into the content area behind the Liquid Glass controls. This creates a dynamic effect where the color is visible through the glass and moves with the content as the user scrolls. I want to know why new UI Framework APIs aren’t backward compatible, specifically in SwiftUI? It leads to code with lots of if-else statements. Existing APIs have been updated to work with the new design where possible, ensuring that apps using those APIs will adopt the new design and function on both older and newer operating systems. However, new APIs often depend on deep integration across the framework and graphics stack, making backward compatibility impractical. When using these new APIs, it's important to consider how they fit within the context of the latest OS. The use of if-else statements allows you to maintain compatibility with older systems while taking full advantage of the new APIs and design features on newer systems. If you are using new APIs, it likely means you are implementing something very specific to the new design language. Using conditional code allows you to intentionally create different code paths for the new design versus older operating systems. Prefer to use if #available where appropriate to intentionally adopt new design elements. Are there any Liquid Glass materials in iOS or macOS that are only available as part of dedicated components? Or are all those materials available through new UIKit and AppKit views? Yes, some variations of the Liquid Glass material are exclusively available through dedicated components like sliders, segmented controls, and tab bars. However, the "regular" and "clear" glass materials should satisfy most application requirements. If you encounter situations where these options are insufficient, please file feedback. If I were to create an app today, how should I design it to make it future proof using Liquid Glass? The best approach to future-proof your app is to utilize standard system controls and design your UI to align with the standard system look and feel. Using the framework-provided declarative API generally leads to easier adoption of future design changes, as you're expressing intent rather than specifying pixel-perfect visuals. Pay close attention to the design sessions offered this year, which cover the design motivation behind the Liquid Glass material and best practices for its use. Is it possible to implement your own sidebar on macOS without NSSplitViewController, but still provide the Liquid Glass appearance? While technically possible to create a custom sidebar that approximates the Liquid Glass appearance without using NSSplitViewController, it is not recommended. The system implementation of the sidebar involves significant unseen complexity, including interlayering with scroll edge effects and fullscreen behaviors. NSSplitViewController provides the necessary level of abstraction for the framework to handle these details correctly. Regarding the SceneDelagate and scene based life-cycle, I would like to confirm that AppDelegate is not going away. Also if the above is a correct understanding, is there any advice as to what should, and should not, be moved to the SceneDelegate? UIApplicationDelegate is not going away and still serves a purpose for application-level interactions with the system and managing scenes at a higher level. Move code related to your app's scene or UI into the UISceneDelegate. Remember that adopting scenes doesn't necessarily mean supporting multiple scenes; an app can be scene-based but still support only one scene. Refer to the tech note Migrating to the UIKit scene-based life cycle and the Make your UIKit app more flexible WWDC25 session for more information.

One screen in my app uses a navigation bar with some buttons added to the titleView and some buttons added as a customView of a single rightBarButtonItem. In iOS 26 (beta 9), if I switch to the home screen and back again, the titleView and rightBarButtonItem disappear and an overflow button (three dots) appears instead. Nothing happens when I click the overflow button. Here's a screen capture: https://youtu.be/tthRnMz98kA This also happens when I switch to another app, when I rotate the device or when I resize the app window. In all cases, there is enough room to show all the buttons, but they still disappear. I overrode the viewWillTransition function in my view controller and logged when that runs. I can see that if I switch to the home screen and back again before that runs (within one or two seconds), there's no problem. But once that runs, the navigation bar items disappear and the overflow button appears. I have not done anything to set up the overflow button and don't have any need to use it. The documentation about it isn't very detailed, but it seems like it shouldn't be used unless I add it. This wasn't a problem in iOS 18 or earlier iOS versions. Does anyone know how to stop this? BTW, I'm using Swift, but not SwiftUI.

Environment iOS 26.0 (device), Xcode 26 beta 7 SwiftUI TabView using the new Tab("…", value:) API iPhone only (aware that minimize is iPhone-only) Issue .tabBarMinimizeBehavior(.onScrollDown) only works reliably in my Settings tab. In my other tabs (Dashboard / Games / Help), the tab bar does not minimize when scrolling, even though the content is scrollable. The main difference: those tabs are wrapped in a NavigationStack(path:) with a bound NavigationPath. Settings has no path binding. Repro (minimal) import SwiftUI enum TabSel: Hashable { case dashboard, games, settings } struct Root: View { @State private var selection: TabSel = .dashboard // Per-tab paths @State private var dashPath = NavigationPath() @State private var gamesPath = NavigationPath() var body: some View { if #available(iOS 26, *) { TabView(selection: $selection) { // ❌ Does NOT minimize when scrolling SwiftUI.Tab("Dashboard", systemImage: "square.grid.2x2.fill", value: .dashboard) { NavigationStack(path: $dashPath) { ScrollView { // ... } } } // ❌ Same here SwiftUI.Tab("Games", systemImage: "sportscourt.fill", value: .games) { NavigationStack(path: $gamesPath) { ScrollView { // ... } } } // ✅ Minimizes as expected on scroll SwiftUI.Tab("Settings", systemImage: "gear", value: .settings) { // Note: also inside a NavigationStack, but no `path` binding NavigationStack { ScrollView { // ... } } } } .tabBarMinimizeBehavior(.onScrollDown) } } } What I tried Removing nested stacks in child views → no change Ensured no .tabViewStyle(.page) / PageTabViewStyle() anywhere No toolbar(.hidden, for: .tabBar) on the tab roots Confirmed the content is scrollable and tested on device Expected All tabs should minimize the tab bar on downward scroll. Actual Only the Settings tab (no path binding) minimizes; tabs with NavigationStack(path:) do not. Questions Is this a known issue with NavigationStack(path:) and .tabBarMinimizeBehavior in iOS 26 betas? Any recommended workaround that keeps a bound NavigationPath per tab?

Here is a simple view to demonstrate the issue struct ContentView: View { @State private var isPresented = false var body: some View { VStack { Button("Test") { isPresented = true } } .alert("Test", isPresented: $isPresented, actions: { Button("Delete All", role: .destructive) {} }, message: { Text("Are You Sure?") }) .padding() } }``` Which results in ![example alert]("https://developer.apple.com/forums/content/attachment/c6210120-d82e-4df5-a01a-fc5cb168e1bf" "title=Screenshot 2025-09-08 at 08.57.21.png;width=546;height=442") The destructive button is almost unreadable. WCAG score is 1.4, far below the minimum recommended 4.5. I found [this post](https://stackoverflow.com/q/66448869) on SO going back to Big Sur, but not on this forum. Any known workarounds (except for building my own dialogs, which I am trying to avoid)? Using confirmationDialog instead of alert does not make a difference.

I’m trying to keep a specific row visually stable while the data backing a ScrollView changes. Goal 1. Before updating model.items, capture the top row’s offset relative to the scroll view. 2. Mutate the observable state so SwiftUI recomputes layout — but don’t draw yet. 3. Read the new layout, compute the delta, and adjust the scroll position so the previously visible row stays put. 4. Only then draw the new frame. Reduced example @Observable final class SomeModel { var items: [SomeItem] = [/* ... */] } struct MyBox: View { @Environment(SomeModel.self) private var model var body: some View { ScrollView { VStack { ForEach(model.items, id: \.id) { item in Color.red.frame(height: randomStableHeight(for: item.id)) } } } } } // Elsewhere: let oldRow = recordOldRow() // capture the row to stabilize model.items = generateNewItems() // mutate model (invalidates layout) let newPos = capturePreviousRowNewPosition(oldRow) // read new layout? restoreScrollPosition() // adjust so oldRow stays visually fixed // draw now Is that pipeline achievable in SwiftUI? If not, what’s the supported way to keep a row visually stable while the list updates?

In iOS 26, should we have bootloader that runs the repo on startup - or should we have that inside tasks in root view? we have repos that runs as a «closed» functions, we dont throw but updates swiftdata and we use @query in the views. So what is best? and for the repo we should have a repo that runs the upserts manage relations eg? Should that run on a modelactor?

I have been banging my head against this problem for a bit now. I am trying to build a bidirectional, infinitely scrolling list that implements these core requirements: Loads data up/down on the fly as the user scrolls Preserves scroll velocity as the list is updated Restores the scroll to the exact visual location after data has changed Ensures no flicker when restoring scroll position - the user cannot know the list has updated and should continue scrolling as normal Because LazyVStack does not play well with animations, I am opting to go with VStack and am implementing my own sliding window for data. This means that data can be removed as well as added, and a simple application of a height delta is not enough when restoring position. So far I have tried many things: Relying on ScrollPosition - simply does not work by itself as described (swift UI trying to keep the position stable with ID's) Relying on ScrollPosition.scrollTo - only kind of works with ID, no way to restore position with pixel perfect accuracy Intercepting the UIKit scrollView instance, using it to record and access the top row's position, mutating data and then queuing a scroll restoration using CATransaction.setCompletionBlock - this is the closest I've come, and it satisfies the top 3 requirements but sometimes I get a flicker on slightly heavier lists What I would really like, is a way of using ScrollView and granularly hooking into the lifecycle of the view after layout, and just before draw. At this point I would update the relevant scroll positions, and allow draw to continue. Is this possible? My knowledge is very limited at this point, but I believe I may be able to achieve something of the sort by swizzling layerWillDraw? Does this make sense, and is it prudent? In general, I'm very interesting in hearing what people have to say about the above, as well as this problem in general.

i am try to build an app that show beautiful result represent the user activity. but i found that if i write metal code in the View of some DeviceActivityReportScene, the metal code wasn't working. (the same metal code works in other taget) i can switch to canvas, but the perform is bad compare with metal. can use metal? or it is just not working?

Hi everyone, I’m running into a strange animation glitch when using a Menu inside a glassEffect container. Here’s a minimal example: import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @Namespace private var namespace var body: some View { ZStack { Image(.background) .resizable() .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity) .ignoresSafeArea() GlassEffectContainer { HStack { Button("b1") {} Button("b2") {} Button("b3") {} Button("b4") {} Button("b5") {} Menu { Button("t1") { } Button("t2") { } Button("t3") { } Button("t4") { } Button("t5") { } } label: { Text("Menu") } } } .padding(.horizontal) .frame(height: 50) .glassEffect() } } } What happens: The bar looks fine initially: When you open the Menu, the entire bar morphs into the menu: When dismissing, the bar briefly animates into a solid rectangle before reapplying the glass effect: Questions: Is there a way to prevent that brief rectangle animation when dismissing the menu? If not, is it possible to avoid the morphing altogether and have the menu simply overlay on top of the bar instead of replacing it? Any ideas or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone! I've encountered an issue when using Sheet + ScrollView on Mac Catalyst: the buttons in the toolbar appear with an abnormal gray color. import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { VStack { } .sheet(isPresented: .constant(true)) { Sheet() } } } struct Sheet: View { var body: some View { NavigationStack { ScrollView { // <-- no issue if use List } .toolbar { Button(action: {}) { // <-- 👀 weird gray color Image(systemName: "checkmark") } } } } } Steps to Reproduce: On macOS 26.0 beta 9, use Xcode 26.0 beta 7 to create an iOS project and enable Mac Catalyst. Paste the code above. Select the Mac Catalyst scheme and run the project. The buttons in the toolbar show a strange gray appearance. If you change the ScrollView to a List in the code, the issue does not occur. FB20120285

I just made a small test app that uses SwiftData with CloudKit capability. I created a simple Book model as seen below. It looks like enums and structs when used with CloudKit capability all trigger this error: 'NSKeyedUnarchiveFromData' should not be used to for un-archiving and will be removed in a future release I fixed the error by using genreRaw String and using a computed property to use it in the app, but it popped back up after adding the ReadingProgress struct Should I ignore the error and assume Apple still supports enums and codable structs when using SwiftData with CloudKit? import SwiftData @Model class Book { var title: String = "" var author: String = "" var genreRaw: String = Genre.fantasy.rawValue var review: String = "" var rating: Int = 3 var progress: ReadingProgress? var genre: Genre { get { Genre(rawValue: genreRaw) ?? Genre.fantasy } set { genreRaw = newValue.rawValue } } init(title: String, author: String, genre: Genre, review: String, rating: Int, progress: ReadingProgress? = nil) { self.title = title self.author = author self.genre = genre self.review = review self.rating = rating self.progress = progress } } struct ReadingProgress: Codable { var currentPage: Int var totalPages: Int var isFinished: Bool var percentComplete: Double { guard totalPages > 0 else { return 0 } return Double(currentPage) / Double(totalPages) * 100 } } enum Genre: String, Codable, CaseIterable { case fantasy case scienceFiction case mystery case romance var displayName: String { switch self { case .fantasy: return "Fantasy" case .scienceFiction: return "Science Fiction" case .mystery: return "Mystery" case .romance: return "Romance" } } }

Hello everyone, I’m just trying to position these times and check boxes side by side as shown in the attachment. So far no matter what I try, it only lists. There are more fixed times for example 10:00am all the way to 6:30pm. The user picks the times that they are NOT available. This is a sample of the code below. The check boxes work fine, it’s just the screen layout I’m having issues with. Any advice will be appreciated. ..................................... import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @State private var wakeup = Date.now @State private var isCheckedOption900 = false @State private var isCheckedOption930 = false var body: some View { Text("Select unavailable Dates/Times") DatePicker("Please enter a date", selection: $wakeup) .labelsHidden() } Form{ Section("Enter Blockout times") { Toggle(isOn: $isCheckedOption900) { Text("9:00am") } .toggleStyle(CheckboxToggleStyle()) Toggle(isOn: $isCheckedOption930) { Text("9:30am") } .toggleStyle(CheckboxToggleStyle()) }

In my UIKit app, in my view controller, I have a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and a UITextView, and I need to get the size of the toolbar to calculate the correct keyboard intersection, and change my text view layout so that the text doesn't get obscured when the keyboard is shown on screen. It's been working fine till now, but with iOS26, I am running into an issue, because the toolbar size is completely different. For this code: NSInteger offset = (self.navigationController.isToolbarHidden == NO)? (self.navigationController.toolbar.frame.size.height): 0; iOS18 returns '49' iOS26 returns ''812'. This obviously throws off the calculations for keyboard avoidance. Is there a way to overcome this, other than ignoring or hard-coding toolbar height?

Hello, I'm facing issues when using prefersLargeTitles on iOS26, as you can see in the UI hierarchy, the largeTitle is assigned to a UINavigationBarLargeTitleView but not in the UINavigationBar. On the other hand, iOS18 we only have the navigationBar largeTitle. Is this an identified issue, how can I fix it? We set the title and set prefersLargeTitles to true, do you know any reason this happens? Additionally, if I set the navigationBar.isTranslucent to false the extra NavigationBarLargeView in the TableView is non-existent. Thank you! iOS26 iOS18

Currently refreshable modifier does not support nil as a value and there's no way of disabling refreshable without recreating the whole view. There are a few posts showing how refreshable could be optionally disabled on scrollViews using: \EnvironmentValues.refresh as? WritableKeyPath<EnvironmentValues, RefreshAction?> https://stackoverflow.com/a/77587703 However, this approach doesn't seem to work with Lists. Has anyone find any solutions for this?

I'm running into an issue where my application will hang when switching tabs. The issue only seems to occur when I include a Swift Chart in a navigation label. The application does not hang If I replace the chart with a text field. This appears to only hang when running on macOS 26. When running on iOS (simulator) or visionOS (simulator, on-device) I do not observe a hang. The same code does not hang on macOS 15. Has any one seen this behavior? The use case is that my root view is a TabView where the first tab is a summary of events that have occurred. This summary is embedded in a NavigationStack and has a graph of events over the last week. I want the user to be able to click that graph to get additional information regarding the events (ie: a detail page or break down of events). Initially, the summary view loads fine and displays appropriately. However, when I switch to a different tab, the application will hang when I switch back to the summary view tab. In Xcode I see the following messages === AttributeGraph: cycle detected through attribute 162104 === === AttributeGraph: cycle detected through attribute 162104 === === AttributeGraph: cycle detected through attribute 162104 === === AttributeGraph: cycle detected through attribute 162104 === === AttributeGraph: cycle detected through attribute 162104 === A simple repro is the following import SwiftUI import Charts @main struct chart_cycle_reproApp: App { var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { TabView { Tab("Chart", systemImage: "chart.bar") { NavigationStack { NavigationLink { Text("this is an example of clicking the chart") } label: { Chart { BarMark( x: .value("date", "09/03"), y: .value("birds", 3) ) // additional marks trimmed } .frame(minHeight: 200, maxHeight: .infinity) } } } Tab("List", systemImage: "list.bullet") { Text("This is an example") } } } } }

On iPhones: It will force the full width of the accessory view irrespective of its content Placing a view that manages its own glass – like a collection of individual glassy buttons – means that the full-width container is still encased in an outer layer of glass. There is no way to remove the outer glass layer, and it's not exposed as a property of a visual effect view, of the parent _UITabAccessoryContainer, or its parent _UITabBarContainerView. On iPads: Infuriatingly, it behaves completely different in regular width layouts. Suddenly, it doesn't draw a full width glass container around the content and starts respecting the supplied view's layout. A collection of glassy buttons starts working as intended. This all falls apart in compact layouts and starts behaving like an iPhone. The lack of configuration on this API is deeply unusual. More unusual is that there's no layout guide or similar for us to hook into to supply our own bottom accessory behavior.

In iOS and iPadOS 26 beta 9 (and previous batas), setting the tintColor property on a navigation bar does not tint bar button items. The text and images are always black in the following cases: Buttons displaying only text (initWithTitle:) Buttons displaying only a symbol (initWithImage:) Buttons displaying system items, ie., UIBarButtonSystemItemCancel. Nav bar title The tintColor seems to be respected for: Selected-state background for buttons configured with changesSelectionAsPrimaryAction. To reproduce, Create a UINavigationController, Add bar button items to its navigation item, Set a tint color as in the following statement: self.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = [UIColor redColor]; Then note that the bar button items are black rather than red as expected. I have filed a feedback: FB19980265.

The new UITabBarController APIs are great! But they leave a lot to be desired. For example, let's say I want a bottom accessory – one simple enough that it could be a UIBarButtonItem. The UITabAccessoryAPI only takes UIViews but passing a simple UIVIew or UIButton will create a new problem: now the view is stretched to be huge instead of a tiny little image-button. New approach: Show it on screen as a contextual overlay modal thing. I can do that, no problem. New problem: It won't animate down when the tab bar minimizes, like the bottom accessory does; there is no layout guide exposed that allows us to hook into this. I'd really rather not reverse engineer to grab the platter when the state is minimized and set some funky layout constraints to adapt to it, determine that it can fit (a bit irrelevant in this instance, since it's a single button), and animate into place as the tab bar animates. I know there's a new contentLayoutGuide, but it doesn't seem there's anything like what I'm looking for here. I basically just want a tab accessory view, but I don't want to commit to it being so huge. And what happens if I want multiple views here? Suddenly, this opens up the toolbar, but… having a toolbar and a tab bar in the same app is an exercise in frustration, since the tab bar will cover up the toolbar. In a different environment, I may have gone ahead and just wrapped my own UITabBar, as Steve Troughton-Smith does via his Mastodon post (can't link directly). That presents another host of issues though: iPad behavior goes out the window. I'd probably still have to dig into private APIs to get a magic pocket effect that works the same as the UITabBarController's! UIScrollEdgeElementContainerInteraction doesn't behave exactly the same as the interaction added to the tab bar by the tab bar controller. Is there any such API for this? What possible reason could there be for keeping these APIs private?

Starting from iOS 26 simulator (beta 7), I could not see any debugDescription from UIToolbar. The Accessibility Inspector tool could not see anything beneath the toolbar even if we can see elements like static texts and buttons on the simulator. When the same app is run on an iOS 18.2 simulator, the debugDescription for elements under a UIToolbar is available. Is the absence of debugDescription for UIToolbar a bug?

import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @State private var selection = 1 var body: some View { TabView(selection: $selection) { Tab("1", systemImage: "1.circle", value: 1) { Text("Tab 1") } Tab("2", systemImage: "2.circle", value: 2) { Text("Tab 2") } } .tabViewBottomAccessory { if selection == 1 { Text("Bottom Bar for Tab 1") } } } } With this structure, I'm supposing when I select tab 2, the bottom accessory will be hidden, but it is not hidden for the first time, after I click back to tab 1, then click tab 2, it is hidden. I think this is a bug?