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'm trying to use URL structure in the foundation framework and it is failing to build, returning a nil value. Could it be trying to evaluate the string I am giving it as a variable for its argument at build time? Is there a test argument I can give URL to see if it can return a non-nil value? (of URL type)?

I'm using the new badge feature for UIBarButtonItem, but it's not working properly for me when transitioning between view controllers. I have two view controller with various right bar button items. In the first view controller the first button (the one with the bell) has a badge with a numeric count. The second view controller has the same button but in the third position. When I push the second view controller, it seems that the badge maintains also the old position, so I see two buttons with badges instead of one. What can I do to fix this?

With iOS 26 the CPListSection header has a transparent background, and when the list scrolls under the header it doesn't look good at all. We expected to see a glass fading effect maybe, like the one on the top of the screen. Is it a known bug?

I have two views I've applied Liquid Glass to in Swift UI. I've noticed that depending on the height of the view the material changes and I'm not sure why. See the attached screenshot. Both views add the liquidGlass style in the same way but behave very differently on the same background. Ideally I'd like them to look the same as the bottom one. Is that the same as the clear style?

As the title indicates the problem, the large title is shown but the small title in Navitation Bar view is not shown when scrolled up with iOS26 beta7. It works with iOS18 or earlier. Is this iOS26 bug?

The brand new animation in Stage Manager greatly reduced dizziness. However, don’t know why it ONLY applies when no window was presented. What would be the problem elsewhere? Stage Manager is one of pretty few motion pictures that annoyed me and forced me to turn on Reduce Motion, or stop using Stage Manager. Big pity… macOS 26.0 (25A5346a) wont use ipad to post…

On earlier iOS versions Live Activity displays correctly according to mode set.  Can't find an opened issue for that version: iOS 26 device: iPhone 16

While the activityBackgroundTint modifier is intended to set the background color of a Live Activity, it often fails to dynamically update, leaving the activity with an incorrect background. Replacing it with ZStack { Color(.background) .... } solves the problem, but this is a workaround. The activityBackgroundTint modifier is still needed, at a minimum, so that the "Allow Live Activity for the app" extension does not have the default color.

Existing smartphones store multiple NFC card information. When the NFC antenna of the phone is close to the card reader, it is usually necessary to open the APP to select NFC card information or default to one card information to be transmitted to the card reader. It is not possible to quickly select or switch cards among multiple cards. For example, after using the NFC function to swipe the subway card, the phone needs to open the car access control and community access control again. It is necessary to open the mobile NFC card information management APP to select the community access control card and then swipe the mobile NFC access control, which causes inconvenience. （现有的智能手机存储多个 NFC 卡信息。当手机的NFC天线靠近读卡器时，通常需要打开APP选择NFC卡信息或默认一个卡信息传输到读卡器。无法在多张卡之间快速选择或切换卡。例如，使用NFC功能刷完地铁卡后，手机需要重新打开车内门禁和小区门禁。需要打开手机NFC卡信息管理APP选择社区门禁卡，然后刷手机NFC门禁，造成不便。） Divide the smartphone screen into multiple areas, and users can freely define corresponding NFC information for each area. When the screen is turned off and not unlocked, select NFC card information by pressing different screen areas with your fingers. When the mobile NFC is close to the card reader, the selected card information will be transmitted to the reader(将智能手机屏幕划分多个区域，每个区域手机用户可以自由定义对应NFC信息。在熄屏’不解锁的情况下，通过手指按压不同屏幕区域选择NFC卡片信息，手机NFC贴近读卡器时将选择的卡片信息传递给读卡器。) Below, the method will be further explained in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and embodiments. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a utility model; Figure 2 is the flowchart of the present utility model; NFC reader, 2. Mobile screen partition, 3. NFC signal in Figure 1. In Figure 2, 1. Press the area of the screen partition with your finger. 2. Place the phone close to the NFC reader. 3. The phone senses the returned NFC signal. 4. The phone detects the pressed area.（ 下面结合附图和实施例对方法进一步说明。 图1为实用新型示意图； 图2为本实用新型流程图； 图1中1.NFC读取器，2.手机屏幕分区，3.NFC信号。 图2中1.手指按压屏幕分区的区域2.手机贴近NFC读取器3.手机感应到返回的NFC信号4.手机检测到按压的区域，5.是否检测到手机用户按压区域的动作，6.检测到按压区域，根据按压区域做出匹配相对应的NFC的动作7.选择用户所需的NFC卡8.NFC卡收到信息并发出卡片信息9.NFC读卡器收到NFC卡的信息。） For example, a smartphone user has N NFC virtual cards in their phone. Users can divide the smartphone screen into N areas, distinguished as A area, B area, C area..., each area controls different NFC. When a smartphone user holds down the B area that controls NFC (such as virtual access cards) and brings the phone close to the NFC card reader (such as access control). The mobile phone will sense NFC signals (access control signals), triggering the phone to detect the area that the user is pressing. There are two possibilities. Firstly, if the user's pressing action is not detected, the NFC card corresponding to the default A zone (set as the default here) will be selected. If the user's pressing action is detected and it is detected that the pressing is in Zone B (the partition corresponding to the access card), then the NFC information corresponding to Zone B is triggered. The smartphone receives this message, and the corresponding NFC sends out a card message. The NFC card reader (access control device) receives the message and reacts (door opens).（例如，一智能手机用户手机中有N个NFC虚拟卡。用户可以将智能手机屏幕分为N个区域，分辨为A区、B区、C区······，每个区域分别控制不同的NFC。当智能手机用户按住控制NFC（如虚拟门禁卡）的B区域并将手机靠近NFC读卡器（如门禁）。手机将会感应到NFC信号（门禁信号），触发手机检测用户正在按压的区域。有两种可能性，第一没有检测到用户的按压动作则选择默认的A区（这里把A区设为默认）所对应的NFC卡。第二检测到用户的按压动作并检测出按压的是B区域（门禁卡所对应的分区），则触发B区域所对应的NFC信息。智能手机收到此信息，相对应的NFC发出卡片信息，NFC读卡器（门禁设备）收到信息，做出反应（门打开）。） 图1 image1 图2 image2

Here is my code and the error code being generated during build. let myString : String = "https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_DAILY&symbol=AAPL&apikey= D5GY7HKODE66G0T9" var banjo = URL(string: myString) let task = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with:banjo ) { myDatastring , response , error in} // task.resume() I've tested that URL in my browser and it works. But when I try to build I get: Value of optional type 'URL?' must be unwrapped to a value of type 'URL' Please tell me what I'm doing wrong. I think the URL struct is not returning a URL type of object.

Hi there. Our designer is designing our app in Figma with the navigation element with compact size navigation bar, and large title. I couldn't find an API to actually configure the nav bar to be compact while keeping the large title enabled. Figma uses the libraries provided by Apple so it's weird I can't find such configuration in iOS26. I'm adding a screenshot of the options in Figma. First option is: Large size & large text. The one our designer is using is compact size & large text.

Hi Guys, I noticed that with Icon Composer when you export the icon it does not export a square image, is there any way of doing it or that's how it is now? Checking the icon on the iPhone something doesn't seem right...

I am creating a shooting game which uses Game Center for multiplayer and I want to make the Matchmaker view look different. How can I do that?

I have an app that displays a MapView. While I am in light mode everything is fine. I can scroll around the map and my overlays (made by UIVisualEffectView containing an UIGlassEffect) stay light and look well! As soon as I change my phone to dark mode, depending on what's underneath the buttons (a light residential area or darker wooded areas) some of my buttons change color. But not all, only where it's supposedly lighter or darker underneath. This makes my whole UI look strange. Some buttons bright, some dark. Is there a way to lock a "color" or interfaceStyle to the effects-view? In light mode everything is fine, but in dark mode it just looks super strange.

We have found that on iOS 26 beta some of our app icons built from an Xcode 16 asset catalog containing a single 1024x1024 .png file have a Liquid Glass effect applied to them while others have not. The documentation states that If you choose not to use Icon Composer, you can still use an AppIcon asset catalog in your project containing individual app icon images and let the system apply the Liquid Glass material. and If you prefer, you can take advantage of the system’s automatically generated treatment that is applied to all app icons. Is there any insight into how the system treats app icons that have not yet been updated with Icon Composer?

I’m delighted with the introduction of new color folders. Although, I can’t help but wonder why we still need both color folders and tags. Aren’t the color folders sufficient for our needs?

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.

In the video ”Create Icons with Icon Composer”, the presenter mentions that Apple has created a layer-to-SVG script for Illustrator that‘s available for download: Once the artwork is in a good place, next we want to export the layers as SVGs. For every tool, this can look a bit different. For those using Illustrator, we've created a layer to SVG script that will automate this for you, which you can download. Exporting out the canvas size ensures everything drops right into position in Icon Composer. Here‘s the link to the mention: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/361/?time=377 I can’t find any place to get this script, and my designer is very interested in using it to import our Illustrator icon into Icon Composer. Can someone point me to it?

As of right now Icon Composer does not support creating app icons for visionOS and tvOS. It appears that only system apps can provide glass icons for those platforms. How should developers handle this? In extreme cases, the flat icon on those platforms will look wildly different from their glass counterparts. From what I have seen visionOS and tvOS also do not apply any automatic treatment like on iOS where legacy icons get a glass effect. So, third party app icons are just going to look out of place for (hopefully just) a year on those platforms? What is the recommended approach here? You could obviously fake the effect, but I feel like that would be worse.

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