NSButtons disappear on macOS 26

UI Frameworks UIKit
cliffr OP
Created 14h
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I have attached 2 images of our Mac Apps user interface. The app is built for macOS 15.6 or newer.

On macOS 15 and earlier everything looks fine. But the same App running on macOS 26 the controls disappear. We were able to temporarily resolve the problem by adding UIDesignRequiresCompatibility to the info.plist.

This type of nonsense happens all over the app without the compatibility switch. Shouldn't all these legacy controls be backward compatible on Glass?

This part of the app where the controls are disappearing is built in Swift (not swift ui) and uses standard programatic layout and visual constraints.

On macOS 26, there are no Xcode warnings or layout errors on the console relative to the layout so we are confused as to how we would resolve this without the use of UIDesignRequiresCompatibility.

Is this some kind of bug in NSControl glass compatibility? We are not likely to move the entire app into SwiftUI anytime soon. How would we resolve this?

Answered by cliffr in 868505022

Thank you for your response. We figured out how to solve the issue and no longer need the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility flag.

Our fix works for both macOS 26 and 15.6. It may help others to know that mainly the problem seems to relate to what I guess is an ambiguous layout for UIKit.

We fixed it by simply ensuring that in every place where we saw layout issues on macOS 26 the controls in either the vertical or horizontal direction were tied at both ends to the container, so this broke:

"H:|-[startLabel(40)]-[startDateTime]-[ephType]"

and this fixed it:

"H:|-[startLabel(40)]-[startDateTime]-[ephType]-|"

Note that the control on the right is tied to the right edge of the container. It was working on earlier version of macOS because we sized the parent container to be wide enough. The same type of things solves the same issues in the vertical direction.

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DTS Engineer OP
Apple
13h

Thank you for your post and the comprehensive description, including the accompanying images. It is intriguing to note that the button will be absent in iOS 26. Your application appears to be well-designed. May I request that you create a simple focused project where you can reproduce the same issue in iOS 26? The button disappears unless you add the key to the Info.plist file to disable Liquid Glass.

If so, please share a link to your test project. That'll help us better understand what's going on. If you're not familiar with preparing a test project, take a look at Creating a test project.

Albert Pascual
  Worldwide Developer Relations.

0
cliffr OP
7h
Accepted Answer

Thank you for your response. We figured out how to solve the issue and no longer need the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility flag.

Our fix works for both macOS 26 and 15.6. It may help others to know that mainly the problem seems to relate to what I guess is an ambiguous layout for UIKit.

We fixed it by simply ensuring that in every place where we saw layout issues on macOS 26 the controls in either the vertical or horizontal direction were tied at both ends to the container, so this broke:

"H:|-[startLabel(40)]-[startDateTime]-[ephType]"

and this fixed it:

"H:|-[startLabel(40)]-[startDateTime]-[ephType]-|"

Note that the control on the right is tied to the right edge of the container. It was working on earlier version of macOS because we sized the parent container to be wide enough. The same type of things solves the same issues in the vertical direction.

1
DTS Engineer OP
Apple
6h

Thanks for providing us the way you solved your problem.

Albert Pascual
  Worldwide Developer Relations.

0
NSButtons disappear on macOS 26
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