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 Design. Can you expand on how Liquid Glass helps with navigation and focus in the UI? Liquid Glass clarifies the navigation layer by introducing a single, floating pane that acts as the primary navigation area. Buttons within this pane seamlessly morph as you move between sections, and controls can temporarily lift into the glass surface. While avoiding excessive use of glass (like layering glass on glass), this approach simplifies navigation and strengthens the connection between menus, alerts, and the elements that trigger them. What should I do with customized bars that I might have in my app? Reconsider the content and behavior of customized bars. Evaluate whether you need all the buttons and whether a menu might be a better solution. Instead of relying on background colors or styling, express hierarchy through layout and grouping. This is a good opportunity to adopt the new design language and simplify your interface. What are scroll edge effects, and what options do we have for them? Scroll edge effects enhance legibility in controls by lifting interactive elements and separating them from the background. There are two types: a soft edge effect (a subtle blur) and a hard edge effect (a more defined boundary for high-legibility areas like column sorting). Scroll edge effects are designed to work seamlessly with Liquid Glass, allowing content to feel expansive while ensuring controls and titles remain legible. How can we ensure or improve accessibility using Liquid Glass? Legibility is a priority, and refinements are ongoing throughout the betas. Liquid Glass adapts well to accessibility settings like Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Motion. There are two variants of glass: regular glass, designed to be legible by default, and clear glass, used in places like AVKit, which requires more care to ensure legibility. Use color contrast tools to ensure contrast ratios are met. The Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) are a living document offering best practices. The colors and materials pages are key resources. Do you have any recommendations for convincing designers concerned with consistency across Android and Web to use Liquid Glass? Start small and focus on high-utility controls that don't significantly impact brand experience. Native controls offer familiarity and predictability to users. Using the native controls makes sure your app feels at home on the device. Using native frameworks provides built-in accessibility support (dynamic type, reduce transparency, increase contrast). Native controls come with built-in behaviors and interactions. Can ScrollViews include Liquid Glass within them? You can technically put a glass layer inside a scroll view, but it can feel heavy and doesn't align with the system's intention for Liquid Glass to serve as a fixed layer. Think of the content layer as the scrolling layer, and the navigational layer as the one using Liquid Glass. If there is glass on the content layer it will collide into the navigational layer. What core design philosophy guided the direction of iOS 26, beyond the goal of unification? The core design philosophy involved blurring the line between hardware and software, separating UI and navigation elements from content, making apps adaptable across window sizes, and combining playfulness with sophistication. It was about making the UI feel at home on rounded screens. Can we layer Liquid Glass elements on top of each other? Avoid layering Liquid Glass elements directly on top of each other, as it creates unnecessary visual complexity. The system will automatically convert nested glass elements to a vibrant fill style. Use vibrant fills and labels to show control shapes and ensure legibility. Opaque grays should be avoided in favor of vibrant colors, which will multiply with the backgrounds correctly. What will happen to apps that use custom components? Should they be adapted to the new design within the next year? The more native components you use, the more things happen for free. Standard components will be upgraded automatically. Look out for any customizations that might clash. Think about what is the minimum viable change, where your app still feels and looks very similar to what it did. Prioritize changes in core workflows and navigational areas. There are a number of benefits to using native components including user familiarity, built-in accessibility support, and built-in behaviors and interactions. Will Apple be releasing Figma design templates? Sketch kits were published on Monday and can be referenced. The goal is to ensure the resources are well-organized, well-named, and easy to use. It's a high priority.

I have an ongoing activity in progress. Think of: a delivery in progress house internet reboot in progress some water / electricity / internet / tv outage. (food) order processing I want to show a persistent toast message above the tab bar, across all tabs and screens across the app. It could take 15 minutes until the activity is finished. Obviously there's a challenge of: accessibility content overlaying with each other extra engineering effort. What we've thought of doing is: Option1: show a toast message, but when a modal is presented then it presents on top of the toast message. The toast message no longer updates itself. Once the modal is finished, then the toast message re-appears and continues to update. Option2: keep the toast message across all tabs and modals and work through the challenges mentioned Question: What are some other design approaches that could be taken to persist an ongoing activity (much like 'Live Activity', but just across the app when it's in foreground) or what are some design reasons that the two options considered are bad?

I'm using a NavigationSplitView on macOS which needs to show 2 or 3 columns depending on the selection of the sidebar. Column 1 has a list of main activities. Some of these just have some data to show and some have a sublist. Currently, when an item that has no sublist is selected, I set the 2nd column (content:) to: Spacer() .navigationSplitViewColumnWidth(0) This works, although it started hitting bugs requiring a workaround on macOS 26, which got me wondering, what is the correct approach here? NavigationSplitViewVisibility.doubleColumn is not the solution, as this hides column 1, not column 2.

Hey there! I'd love to know if theres a way where you can animate items between ZStack and VStacks? Just like the native iOS notifications on the Lockscreen stack at the bottom and if tapped, they convert from a Stack to a List - I have a list with items, displayed in a VStack, and I make the list collapsable when swiping down, where the items stack behind eachother with a progresisve reduction in opacity & scale, but I havent figured out a way to animate the items between the list and the stack - where you can visually see items starting to overlap and stack ontop of eachother when collapsing the list.

I noticed a discrepancy between the Material specifications for tvOS on the Developer page and the naming in the Design Resources (Sketch files). Which one should we consider authoritative? Apple developer design web page：https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/materials design resource（sketch）

I like that you can choose to tint all your apps, it looks great, but when I’m tinted the myfitnesspal widgets are blank. Just a white square. Kinda frustrating that I have to choose between looks or function..

Hello, I am looking to develop a relationship with a developer that has experience running through the IOS build approval process. To elaborate, my team and I have designed and built a software application which is working through the Apple Developer review process to have the app approved and released to the App Store. Unfortunately, there has been some challenges, simple challenges in my eyes with our interface preventing Apple from approving our application. Happy to elaborate further. A primary problem and solution I have seen is the software build was testing solely on the iPhone but as recently directed it seem the application must be accessible on iPad as well. With this the case, I have experience some software platforms where on the ipad the interface is not displayed on the whole screen. I am looking for direction on how to implement this setup for the 1st IOS build. Another concern from Apples Developer Review team is the App Tracking Transparency kit may need to be implemented.

Hi, is it me or latest beta has pronlem with brightness? i have iPhone 16 pro, and now i must keep disabled auto brightness , at keep slider more or less at maximum, in order to clearly see the screen. fabrizio

I have the June 2025 version, but I'd like to find the 2022. There was something removed from the 2022 that I would like to check out.

Pleeease for the love of any and all things holy, I would really be eternally grateful if Apple decided to release an update that allows users to return to the old the photos app. Phones and technology are already overstimulating, and by making the photos app one continuous page it is emulating a social media app. The continuous page makes it much more overwhelming and confusing to find photos. Change and innovation is great! There are some changes that I enjoy from the ios 18 update, such as the little text enhancers that can emphasize certain words. However, the photos app was fine the way it was. If anything, Apple should allow the PAYING customers to choose how they would like their photos app (keeping the customizable option). also my battery which is normally super great is suddenly not as efficient…reminiscent of past devices I’ve had from Apple.

let glassView = UIVisualEffectView(effect: UIGlassEffect(style: .clear)) glassView.frame = CGRect(x: 100, y: 200, width: 200, height: 400) self.view.addSubview(glassView) Though UIGlassEffect has two variants: .regular and .clear, even the clear one has some blur on the background. Is there a way to do get absolute no blur? Edges still have the glass effect. Apple does this in two places: Camera app: Text magnifier:

This has been an issue since installing the first beta and I haven't seen anyone else say anything about it so I feel like I'm going kind of bonkers. While using Dark Mode, double-tapping to select a word while using the Liquid Glass keyboard, like in Messages or Safari, produces a flashlight-like effect over the text with each tap. While this is a fine animation and pretty helpful when moving the cursor, the brightness of the flashlight effect on white text in Dark Mode makes it impossible to see what you're actually tapping to select. The brightness seems to intensify 100x when rapidly tapping. This is not an issue in Light Mode when the text itself is black. To recreate this, just turn your phone to Dark Mode, go into Messages and type a few words into a thread. Try to double-tap to select a word in the text box. The brightness of the selected word should intensify to the point of being unable to see the word itself. Has anyone been bothered by this? Is there a way to fix or adjust it? I've tried reducing transparency and a bunch of other settings but nothing has worked.

Is it possible to use the new variable draw feature for a custom SF Symbol without it leaving the background behind it when it is not drawn? I am trying to make a tally icon that is drawn with the variable draw, but it doesn't look good if the tally is visible in the background before it is drawn.

Forgot to turn off the ui element status bar. visual garbage. is it not important? your opinion https://developer.apple.com/hello/december24/?cid=ht-hello

While build now I receive this error help me to resolve it Showing Recent Errors Only Prepare build error: Multiple commands produce '/Users/mayankjain/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/PCS_EmpApp-chsylqbxjptobeawzzckymqzagvr/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/PCS_EmpApp.app/Info.plist' note: Target 'PCS_EmpApp' (project 'PCS_EmpApp') has copy command from '/Users/mayankjain/Documents/05-NOV-2025-SWETA_IOS/PCS_EmpApp/PCS_EmpApp/xcode-out/Platforms/iOS/Info.plist' to '/Users/mayankjain/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/PCS_EmpApp-chsylqbxjptobeawzzckymqzagvr/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/PCS_EmpApp.app/Info.plist' note: Target 'PCS_EmpApp' (project 'PCS_EmpApp') has process command with output '/Users/mayankjain/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/PCS_EmpApp-chsylqbxjptobeawzzckymqzagvr/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/PCS_EmpApp.app/Info.plist' Multiple commands produce '/Users/mayankjain/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/PCS_EmpApp-chsylqbxjptobeawzzckymqzagvr/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/PCS_EmpApp.app/Info.plist'

Hi everyone, I've noticed that on iOS 26 beta 1 through beta 4, when using a List with the .plain style, the section header overlaps with the cell content below it, as there is no background for the header. This creates a poor visual experience. Additionally, when using NavigationSplitView on iPad, the second column's list always shows this issue. Is this an intentional design change, or just a temporary issue? I haven't found a good workaround so far. Thanks! FB19066489

Does iOS 26 support HDR images for app icons to be rendered in High Dynamic Range for Springboard or not?

Hi, Upon reviewing our app, we got feedback that our app icon within the Wallet app is not behaving as expected when the home screen is set to "light mode" only. In that case, on the home screen, the app icon remains its default color (e.g., red), regardless of the device's appearance settings (light or dark), which is expected. However, in the apple Wallet, e.g., under the From Apps from your device, app icons change their color (e.g., red in light mode, black in dark mode) when iOS appearance is changed - which is reported as an app issue. I've noticed that all apps in that section are changing the color, not just ours, so it seems to me like a bug in iOS or a behavior that was not clearly defined in the app store guidelines. If there is an API we must use to cover that case, which one would that be? Is this a bug that Apple should resolve, or is this the intended behaviour?

I'm developing an iPadOS 18+ application that uses a UITabBarController, styled as a sidebar, to serve as the primary navigation interface. This setup includes 20 different tabs, each representing a distinct section of the app. For the user experience, each tab needs to present a master-detail interface, implemented using a UISplitViewController. The goal is to allow users to navigate between tabs via the sidebar, and within each tab, access related content through the split view's list-detail pattern. The Problem: Currently, my implementation involves instantiating a separate UISplitViewController for each tab, resulting in 20 unique split view instances embedded inside the UITabBarController. While this works functionally, it leads to significant memory usage, especially after the user opens each tab at least once. The accumulation of all these instantiated view controllers in memory eventually causes performance degradation or even memory warnings/crashes on lower-end iPads. The Question: What is the best approach to implement this type of architecture without running into memory management issues? Specifically: Is there a way to reuse or lazily load the UISplitViewController instances only when needed? Can we unload or release split view controllers that haven't been used for a while to reduce memory pressure? Would a custom container controller be more appropriate than using UITabBarController in this case? Are there iPadOS 18+ best practices or newer APIs that support this kind of complex multi-tab, multi-split-view structure efficiently? Any advice on how to optimize memory usage while preserving the sidebar navigation and split view layout would be highly appreciated.

I just played around on macOS with the new icons created by Icon Composer, and I noticed that the Dock displays programmatically set icons differently. Try this: Make sure you have the Mail app in your Dock. Set the icon appearance to "Tinted/Light" and set a dark (black) background for the Desktop. Run this code: let image = NSWorkspace.shared.icon(forFile: "/System/Applications/Mail.app") if image.isValid { NSApp.applicationIconImage = image } You'll get something like this: When the icon appearance is set to "Default" or "Dark," everything works as expected, and the "Clear/Dark" and "Tinted/Dark" modes seem to work as well. It seems like the Dock uses a special blend mode depending on the selected background, but this does not seem to be the case if the icon is set programmatically. I filed feedback FB20291186.

Hello everyone, I'm very impressed with the Liquid Glass design introduced in iOS 26, especially how native app icons automatically adapt to the system's display mode (dark or light). This brings me to a question: Is it possible to make a website shortcut icon created via Safari's "Add to Home Screen" feature adapt to Dark Mode in the same way? For native apps, we can use tools like Icon Composer and asset catalogs (Assets.xcassets) to provide different icons for each mode. It would be a huge improvement for web clips if we could achieve the same with existing web technologies like apple-touch-icon or the Web App Manifest. If anyone has figured out a way to do this, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share your knowledge. Thanks in advance! 日本語の原文： iOS 26から導入されたLiquid Glassデザインについて。 ネイティブアプリのアイコンがシステムの表示モード（ダークモード/ライトモード）に合わせて自動で最適化されるようになりました。 そこで疑問に思ったのですが、Safariから「ホーム画面に追加」機能を使って作成するWebサイトのショートカットアイコンは、ネイティブアプリと同じようにダークモードに対応できないのでしょうか？ ネイティブアプリの場合は、Icon Composerなどのツールでアセットカタログ（Assets.xcassets）を使い、モードごとのアイコンを用意できますよね。 Web側でも、apple-touch-iconやWeb App Manifestといった既存の仕組みを使って、アイコンを動的に切り替えられるようになると、Webクリップの使い勝手がさらに向上すると思うのですが もし、すでに何らかの方法で対応されている方がいらっしゃれば、ぜひその知見を共有していただけると嬉しいです。