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.

Here’s a recap of the Live Q&A for SwiftUI foundations: Build great apps with SwiftUI. If you participated and asked questions, thank you for coming and participating! If you weren’t able to join us live we hope this recap is useful Where can I watch the VOD? Is the sample code “Wishlist” that was shown available for download? You can view the replay of the entire event here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3vloOtZLkQ The sample code for the Wishlist app will be made available in the coming weeks on the Apple Developer website, we'll send an update via email when it is available. What are the best practices when it comes to building complex navigations in SwiftUI? The developer website has documentation on navigation style best practices. Explore navigation basics like NavigationStack and TabView to get a ground-up understanding. For documentation on navigation APIs see Navigation. How can I integrate UIKit with my SwiftUI app? What about adding SwiftUI into my UIKit app? See UIKit integration: Add UIKit views to your SwiftUI app, or use SwiftUI views in your UIKit app. Both UIKit and SwiftUI provide API to show a view hierarchy of the other. For UIKit to SwiftUI, you would use UIViewControllerRepresentable. For SwiftUI to UIKit, you would use UIHostingController. Landmarks: Interfacing with UIKit walks you through step by step how to implement UIKit in SwiftUI with UIViewControllerRepresentable, and this WWDC22 video demonstrates UIHostingController, for those that want to add SwiftUI to their UIKit. Does Wishlist feature a new iOS 26 font? How can I add custom fonts and text of my app? We’re glad to hear many of you liked wide text shown in Wishlist, however, It is the default system font with some light SwiftUI styling! Check it out for yourself in the sample code when made available, and you can learn more about customizing fonts and text by seeing Font and Applying custom fonts to text. Does Xcode have a dependency graph we can use to optimize our SwiftUI Views? Xcode comes with Instruments. Instruments is the best way to figure out what is causing excessive updates and other issues with performance. That link provides direct tutorials and resources for how to use and understand. Previews also have many useful tools for analyzing SwiftUI views, for more info see Previews in Xcode Check out this video from our latest WWDC Optimize SwiftUI performance with Instruments for information on how to use Instruments to profile and optimize your app with real-world applications If you still have questions, Check out the Instruments section of these forums and create a post so the community has the opportunity to help guide you. Are there UI debugging tools to help diagnose layout issues? Yes, Xcode also features a View Debugger located by selecting the View Debug Hierarchy, pictured below. Use the View Debugger to capture and inspect your view hierarchy, identifying which views affect window sizing. The SwiftUI Inspector also lets you examine view frames and layout behavior. See Diagnosing issues in the appearance of a running app to learn about debugging visual and layout issues. As an absolute beginner, what would be the first go-to step to go for training? Do I need prior knowledge of frameworks to get started with SwiftUI? A great place to learn how to develop for Apple platforms is with Pathways! Many developers start with Develop in Swift tutorials, which exposes you to several frameworks while teaching you the basics of SwiftUI. When you're ready to take your learning further, you can read the documentation for the specific frameworks that interest you at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/.

Hi, I am trying to create a local backup + restore when using SwiftUI and CoreData but I am facing errors left and right. the latest error I am stuck on is: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'executeFetchRequest:error: A fetch request must have an entity.' Here is what am trying to do: Creating a backup (already solved using NSPersistentStoreCoordinator.migratePersistentStore(_:to:options:type:)) Create a new NSPersistentContainer and call its NSPersistentContainer.loadPersistentStores(completionHandler:) (already solved, load is successful) Update the .environment(.managedObjectContext, viewModel.context) so that SwiftUI uses the new context. (HERE is where the error appears) Any help would be appreciated. Here is some sample code of SwiftUI part of the main view: class ViewModel: ObservableObject { @Published var context: NSManagedObjectContext } @main struct MyApp: App { @StateObject var viewModel: ViewModel var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView() .environment(\.managedObjectContext, viewModel.context) } } }

I have a controller that displays a pdf using UIDocumentInteractionController as the presented view. When users open it up, it shows fine. User gets the app backgrounded and session timed out. After timed out, when the app is brought to foreground, I bring our loginVC by removing the old VC used to show the UIDocumentInteractionController. All the crashes are happening at this point. I am not able to reproduce it, but our alert systems show we have crashes happening. The code that shows the pdf is straight forward documentViewController = UIDocumentInteractionController() documentViewController?.delegate = self documentViewController?.url = url documentViewController?.presentPreview(animated: true) and we reset it to nil in delegate documentInteractionControllerDidEndPreview Based on the crash trace, it seems like the crash happens when our login VC replaces it and only when pdf was displayed. The reason of stressing ONLY because when we have other viewcontroller present and they are removed in a similar way, we do not see any issue. So we always replace first and then add a new one childViewController.willMove(toParent: nil) childViewController.viewIfLoaded?.removeFromSuperview() childViewController.removeFromParent() addChild(childViewController) view.addSubview(childViewController.view) childViewController.view.frame = view.bounds childViewController.didMove(toParent: self) Raised a ticket with Apple, but I haven't heard back, and it's been a month. Posting here in case anyone experiences the same and has any solutions. I saw some related posts, and solution was to remove the pdf the moment the app goes to the background, but I am trying to find some alternate solution if possible.

I have an app that run Monte Carlo simulations. I run thousands of simulations in the app and a simulation runs can take on the order of 30 seconds to a minute to complete. I would like to have a progress view that tracks the number of simulation runs. How can I implement this in swiftui?

Hello everyone, The setup: I have an iPadOS app. The app does not require full screen (Requires full screen option is disabled). The problem: The app starts looking unpolished when the canvas becomes too small. What I tried: I am trying to limit the canvas size for our app when run in Stage Manager. How: I saw that UIWindowScene has sizeRestrictions. This property is not always set as per documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiwindowscene/sizerestrictions From my experiments, it only works when it's run on MacOS (in compatibility mode in our case). Console logs: Stage Manager - Requires full screen - OFF willConnectToSession - sizeRestrictions: nil sceneDidBecomeActive - sizeRestrictions: nil Stage Manager - Requires full screen - ON willConnectToSession - sizeRestrictions: nil sceneDidBecomeActive - sizeRestrictions: nil Stage Manager - Requires full screen - OFF - RUN on MacOS willConnectToSession - sizeRestrictions: Available sceneDidBecomeActive - sizeRestrictions: Available Question: Is there a way to enforce this minimum canvas size?

In the header for UIViewController, the method dismissViewControllerAnimated is declared like this: - (void)dismissViewControllerAnimated: (BOOL)flag completion: (void (^ __nullable)(void))completion NS_SWIFT_DISABLE_ASYNC API_AVAILABLE(ios(5.0)); NS_SWIFT_DISABLE_ASYNC means that there's no async version exposed like there would normally be of a method that exposes a completion handler. Why is this? And is it unwise / unsafe for me to make my own async version of it using a continuation? My use case is that I want a method that will sequentially dismiss all view controllers presented by a root view controller. So I could have this extension on UIViewController: extension UIViewController { func dismissAsync(animated: Bool) async { await withCheckedContinuation { continuation in self.dismiss(animated: animated) { continuation.resume() } } } func dismissPresentedViewControllers() async { while self.topPresentedViewController != self { await self.topPresentedViewController.dismissAsync(animated: true) } } var topPresentedViewController: UIViewController { var result = self while result.presentedViewController != nil { result = result.presentedViewController! } return result }

I have a UITextField in my application, and I want to detect all the keys uniquely to perform all relevant task. However, there is some problem in cleanly identifying some of the keys. I m not able to identify the backspace key press in the textField(_:shouldChangeCharactersIn:replacementString:) method. Also I don't know how to detect the Caps Lock key. I am intending to so this because I want to perform some custom handling for some keys. Can someone help me with what is the way of detecting it under the recommendation from apple. Thanks in advance. Note: checking for replacementString parameter in shouldChangeCharactersIn method for empty does not help for backspace detection as it overlaps with other cases.

Why is the pitch slider always visible in the SwiftUI tvOS map view? It doesn't even appear to be supported there, let alone the fact that I specify mapControlVisibility(.hidden). Am I missing something or is Apple? See attached screenshot. This really messes up my UI. Here is my code: import SwiftUI import MapKit struct ContentView: View { @State var position = MapCameraPosition.region(MKCoordinateRegion( center: CLLocationCoordinate2D(latitude: 37.7749, longitude: -122.4194), span: MKCoordinateSpan(latitudeDelta: 0.05, longitudeDelta: 0.05))) var body: some View { Map(position: $position) .mapControlVisibility(.hidden) .mapStyle(.standard(pointsOfInterest: .including(.airport))) } }

In my CarPlay app, I am hiding the navigation bar by using the following: self.mapTemplate?.automaticallyHidesNavigationBar = true self.mapTemplate?.hidesButtonsWithNavigationBar = false I don't want the navigation bar to show unless a user interacts with the map by tapping it. Strangely, when I present a CPNavigationAlert the navigation bar will often appear and then disappear after the alert is dismissed. Is there a setting or reason that the navigation bar would be appearing when presenting this alert? I would like to keep the nav bar hidden during this time.

At this line of code (SketchTextSelectionManager.swift:449), sometimes there will be crashes based on crashlytics reports. let selection = pdfPage.selectionForWord(at: location) This is directly calling into PDFKit's PDFPage#selection method: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/pdfkit/pdfpage/selectionforword(at:) Attached the full stacktrace: Crashed: com.apple.root.user-initiated-qos.cooperative 0 CoreGraphics 0x30c968 PageLayout::getWordRange(unsigned long, long) const + 908 1 CoreGraphics 0x30bbc0 PageLayout::getTextRangeIndex(CGPoint, CGPDFSelectionType, SelectionPrecision) const + 2292 2 CoreGraphics 0x44a53c CGPDFSelectionCreateBetweenPointsWithOptions + 384 3 PDFKit 0x8d5f8 -[PDFPage selectionFromPoint:toPoint:type:] + 168 4 PDFKit 0x92040 -[PDFPage _rvItemAtPoint:] + 64 5 PDFKit 0x91f4c -[PDFPage rvItemAtPoint:] + 84 6 PDFKit 0x8caa8 -[PDFPage selectionForWordAtPoint:] + 40 7 MyApp 0x8420e0 closure #1 in SketchTextSelectionManager.startNewTextSelection(pageId:location:) + 449 (SketchTextSelectionManager.swift:449) 8 MyApp 0x841a70 SketchTextSelectionManager.startNewTextSelection(pageId:location:) + 205 (CurrentNoteManager.swift:205) 9 libswift_Concurrency.dylib 0x61104 swift::runJobInEstablishedExecutorContext(swift::Job*) + 252 10 libswift_Concurrency.dylib 0x63a28 (anonymous namespace)::ProcessOutOfLineJob::process(swift::Job*) + 480 11 libswift_Concurrency.dylib 0x611c4 swift::runJobInEstablishedExecutorContext(swift::Job*) + 444 12 libswift_Concurrency.dylib 0x62514 swift_job_runImpl(swift::Job*, swift::SerialExecutorRef) + 144 13 libdispatch.dylib 0x15d8c _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 392 14 libdispatch.dylib 0x16590 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 156 15 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x4c40 _pthread_wqthread + 228 16 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x1488 start_wqthread + 8 ```

We recently migrated our app to use NavigationSplitView on iPad with a sidebar and detail setup, and we got reports that the navigation buttons on the sidebar disappear when returning to our app after using a different app. I reproduced the issue from a new empty project with the following code (issue tested on iOS 17.4 and iOS 18.3, was not able to reproduce on iOS 16.4): import SwiftUI @main struct TestApp: App { var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { NavigationSplitView { Text("sidebar") .toolbar { ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarLeading) { Button(action: {}) { Image(systemName: "square.and.arrow.down") } } ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarTrailing) { Button(action: {}) { Image(systemName: "square.and.arrow.up") } } } } detail: { Text("detail") .toolbar { ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarLeading) { Button(action: {}) { Image(systemName: "eraser") } } ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarTrailing) { Button(action: {}) { Image(systemName: "pencil") } } } } } } } Please check the following GIF for the simple steps, notice how the navbar buttons in the detail view do not disappear: Here's the console output, it shows that the constraints break internally:

I'm trying to determine if it’s possible to detect when a user interacts with a Slide Over window while my app is running in the background on iPadOS. I've explored lifecycle methods such as scenePhase and various UIApplication notifications (e.g., willResignActiveNotification) to detect focus loss, but these approaches don't seem to capture the event reliably. Has anyone found an alternative solution or workaround for detecting this specific state change? Any insights or recommended practices would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all, I am trying to allow users of my app to select extra options when opening documents, and to remember those options when re-opening documents at launch. So far best idea I have is: Subclass NSDocumentController to provide an NSOpenPanel.accessoryView with the options Create a URL bookmark for each opened file and keep a mapping of bookmarks to options On launch and when the recent documents list changes, prune the stored mappings to match only the recent items Has anyone done this before, or know of a better approach? Thank you.

I have a few crash report from TestFlight with this context and nothing else. No symbols of my application. Crash report is attached. crashlog.crash It crashes at 16H25 (local time paris) and a few minutes after (8) I see the same user doing task in background (they download data with a particular URL in BGtasks) with a Delay that is consistant with a background wait of 5 or 7 minutes. I have no more information on this crash and by the way Xcode refuses to load it and shows an error. ( I did a report via Xcode for this).

I'm working on a macOS application that needs to query the list of available printers using NSPrinter.printerNames. For performance reasons, I'd like to perform this operation on a background thread. However, since NSPrinter is part of AppKit, and AppKit is generally not thread-safe unless explicitly stated, I want to confirm: Is it safe to call NSPrinter.printerNames from a background thread? I couldn’t find explicit guidance in the documentation regarding the thread-safety of printerNames, so any clarification or best practices would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Note: I tested this api on a background thread in code and it did not give any error.

I am currently developing an AR experience using ARKit with SceneKit and am looking to implement functionality that enables: Zooming into the AR camera feed, ideally leveraging the ultra-wide or telephoto lenses available on supported devices. Macro-style focus capabilities, allowing users to view and interact with virtual content closely aligned with small or nearby real-world objects (within a few centimeters). My objective is to ensure that ARKit continues to render the scene accurately while enabling a zoomed-in view or macro-level focus for better detail visibility and alignment. Could you please advise on: Whether ARKit currently supports camera zoom or allows access to macro or ultra-wide cameras within an ARSession. Limitations or considerations when using multi-camera setups in conjunction with ARKit. Any guidance or references to documentation or sample code would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I have encountered a question that I hope to receive an answer to. Currently, I am working on a music project for Mac Catalyst and need to enable music files such as FLAC to be opened by right clicking to view my Mac Catalyst app. But currently, I have encountered a problem where I can see my app option in the right-click open mode after debugging the newly created macOS project using the following configuration. But when I created an iOS project and converted it to a Mac Catalyst app, and then modified the info.plist with the same configuration, I couldn't see my app in the open mode after debugging. May I ask how to solve this problem? Do I need to configure any permissions or features in the Mac Catalyst project? I have been searching for a long time but have not found a solution regarding it. Please resolve it, thank you. Here is the configuration of my macOS project: CFBundleDocumentTypes CFBundleTypeExtensions flac CFBundleTypeIconSystemGenerated 1 CFBundleTypeName FLAC Audio File CFBundleTypeRole Viewer LSHandlerRank Default Note: Sandbox permissions have been enabled for both the macOS project and the iOS to Mac Catalyst project. The Mac Catalyst project also has additional permissions for com. apple. security. files. user taught. read write

For now, my app name length is more than 20 characters, so the iPhone app name displays without a space, and uses the range operator to ensure showing the rest in the next line. Is it possible to show space and name with 2 lines?

I have a custom keypad to accept numeric input for iPads that I have been using for many years now. This is longstanding working code. With iOS 18 the touchUpInside (and other) events in the underlying Objective-C modules are not called in the file owner module when activated from the interface. The buttons seem to be properly activated based on the visual cues (they change colors when pressed). This is occurring in both simulators and on hardware. Setting the target OS version does not help. What could the cause and/or solution of this be?

https://github.com/apple/sample-food-truck Hi! I'm seeing what looks like some weird navigation issue in the Food Truck app. It's from the Live Activity that should deep link to a specific point in the app. There seems be some state where the app is not linking to the correct component. Here are my repro steps on iPhone: Start live activity from OrderDetailView. Navigate to Sidebar component. Tap the Live Activity. App opens TruckView. The App should be opening the OrderDetailView for the Order that was passed to the Live Activity. This seems to work when the app is not currently on Sidebar. Any ideas? I'm testing this on iPhone OS 18.4.1. Is this an issue inside NavigationSplitView? Is this an issue with how Food Truck handles deeplinking?

App update in which there were no changes regarding the widget. Just after it updated, the widget turns black in some cases. It also appears black in the widget gallery. Removing and adding it again did not work in this case, only after an iOS restart it works fine again This is the log 2025-03-20 02:14:05.961611 +0800 Content load failed: unable to find or unarchive file for key: [com.aa.bb::com.aa.bb.widget:cc_widget:systemMedium::360.00/169.00/23.00:(null)~(null)] on no host. The session may still produce one shortly. Error: Using url file:///private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/PluginKitPlugin/51C5E4F2-6F1F-4466-A428-73C73B9CC887/SystemData/com.apple.chrono/placeholders/cc_widget/systemMedium----360.00w--169.00h--23.00r--1f--0.00t-0.00l-0.00b0.00t.chrono-timeline ... Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "file“systemMedium----360.00w--169.00h--23.00r--1f--0.00t-0.00l-0.00b0.00t.chrono-timeline”not exist。" UserInfo={NSFilePath=/private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/PluginKitPlugin/51C5E4F2-6F1F-4466-A428-73C73B9CC887/SystemData/com.apple.chrono/placeholders/cc_widget/systemMedium----360.00w--169.00h--23.00r--1f--0.00t-0.00l-0.00b0.00t.chrono-timeline, NSUnderlyingError=0xa693d3a80 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}