In Apple Music I opened fullscreen for a song and I accidentally clicked some keys and the name and artist name of the song I was playing disappeared, and I can't figure out how to get it back, it temporarily comes back when I hover over the top bar but I can not get it to stay there permanently.
Explore the art and science of app design. Discuss user interface (UI) design principles, user experience (UX) best practices, and share design resources and inspiration.
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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.
Prior to iOS 26, this successfully gave me a modal view with a transparent background:
let settingsVC = MySettingsViewController()
settingsVC.modalPresentationStyle = .automatic
//settingsVC.modalPresentationStyle = .overCurrentContext
self.present(settingsVC, animated: true, completion: {
}
MySettingsViewController:
self.view.backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 0, alpha: 0.5)
Now in iOS 26, modal view is presented in a opaque grey background.
Helvetica (17.0d1e1) has bugs, hopefully the developers and designers will fix it.
Link to the presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16qfpo9Y7Psghv5c_Xl3JBiTPkP4QNaaS/view?usp=sharing
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.
Hello,
I want to make an app that displays the current event(s) (The ones that are ongoing at any given moment) on my Google calendar and shows how far through the event(s) I am with a progress bar, and updates live.
I want it to be as simple as possible and don't want it to take up too much space. I have a little window with some text elements and a progress bar that works if you manually put in values. But I still think the window is too big and clunky and I wonder if it's possible to change it's style?
I'm a bit inexperienced with coding and am completely new to xcode and swift. What approach would you recommend I take with this project? Or what resources would you refer me to?
When receiving or dialing a call, the green (answer) and red (decline) icons appear blurry, and there is a black screen overlay around the icons. This makes it difficult to interact with the call interface properly.
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'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.
Hi everyone, I'm new to building apps on Swift and recently I've been wondering how does Apple get this blur effect behind the control center on Mac OS Tahoe. I think it would be nice to use in an app that I'm making but I can't seem to find it in the docs. Is it available through AppKit? I would appreciate some help on this
Some SF Symbols (wifi for example) render fine with the variable. But many, mostly ones with the circle being variable, do not seem to work. The SF Symbols app shows them rendering with a variable fine. But in code it doesn't work. Am I missing something or is there a reason?
var body: some View {
HStack {
Image(systemName: "01.circle", variableValue: 0.5)
Image(systemName: "figure.wave.circle", variableValue: 0.5)
Image(systemName: "wifi", variableValue: 0.5)
}.font(.largeTitle)
}
}
Post:
In macOS 26 Betas 1–3, the system applied an automatic dark-mode fallback for app icons. This ensured consistency across the Dock and Finder even when developers hadn’t provided dark assets.
Since Beta 4, this fallback was removed. As of Beta 7, icons now rely entirely on developer-updated assets. The result is mixed light and dark icons in the Dock, breaking visual consistency and making app recognition slower in dark mode.
Observed behavior:
• Icons without dark assets are displayed in their original light version.
• Some apps (e.g. Final Cut Pro) show a gray border treatment that feels inconsistent with the rest of the UI.
• The fallback applied in Betas 1–3 is completely absent.
Expected behavior:
System should provide a fallback rendering until developers supply proper dark assets, or offer a toggle in System Settings → Appearance (e.g. “Force Dark Icons”).
This is still present in Beta 7. Is there any plan to restore the fallback mechanism or provide a user option?
Hello everyone,
In the current iOS version, changes in the "liquid glass" light shining effects can repeatedly be observed on older iPhone devices (12/13/14).
This change is often seen after the device is rebooted or after a SystemMemoryReset.ips (System Analysis Data).
It changes very often...
I'm not currently working on apps myself, but perhaps someone has ideas for the upcoming updates involving Liquid Glass.
(please also check the screenshots)
I have accidentally missed the sign up window for the UX Writing lab by 1 hour, but I'd still love to join it if at all possible. I have had this lab several times in the past and it was always very informative.
I have a time tracking app that helps people make the most of their time. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timelines-time-tracking/id1112433234
I'm looking for guidance on how to improve copywriting in my onboarding sequence, on my paywall, and overall throughout the app.
Thank you for considering. My Apple ID is lukas[at]glimsoft.com.
I just discover that feature (a folder lost in the middle of others desktop folder ).
so with each updates:
-/usr/local is emptied
-somes apps in the Application folder, are deleted, even paid apps ..
-i lost : Docker, python 3.13, latexlive2025, Apache NetBeans, java install, Affinity Publisher 2, all my 3D slicers ... github desktop, Epic Games Launcher, ........
296go of apps
Franckly : c'est la merde !!!
I am using a MacBook Pro 16" 2019
any way to stop this behavior ?
thank you !!!
Does iOS 26 support HDR images for app icons to be rendered in High Dynamic Range for Springboard or not?
Context & Issue
I am developing an iOS application.
My app icon uses colors that are relatively close to each other.
When the user enables Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → Grayscale (or similar modes), the icon becomes harder to distinguish because it loses color and contrast is reduced.
Goal
When iOS switches to grayscale mode, I want the app icon to maintain good contrast between its elements so it remains clearly recognizable.
What I’ve tried
Redesigned the icon with more contrasting colors.
Added strokes/outlines, but it still doesn’t look much better in grayscale.
Researched how iOS renders app icons when grayscale is enabled, but couldn’t find a way to override or provide an alternative icon.
Specific questions
Is there any API or mechanism in iOS that allows providing a different version of the app icon when the user has grayscale mode enabled?
If there’s no direct API, are there any best practices for designing iOS app icons to ensure good contrast when converted to grayscale?
Do we have to design grayscale version for app icon?
Thank you!
Feedback id: FB16140301
Below are the steps to reproduce the bug in Contacts app.
Open Contacts app.
Now search for a contact and didSelect that contact.
Now slightly hold swipe right(from view's center leading position) as to pop the view but not fully swipe, now release the finger and you can see the back nav bar button missing and tapping the back button position also doesn't perform dismiss action.
Now do fully swipe from left to right to dismiss(pop) current view.
Here you can see the search bar missing.-> That's the bug.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/devicecreaterequest/data-data.dictionary/attributes-data.dictionary
According to the API documentation above, the parameter values for platform can be three: IOS, MAC-OS, and UNIVERSAL. After debugging, it was found that IOS and MAC-OS can be used normally, but UNIVERSAL encountered an error UNIVERSAL' is not a valid value for the attribute 'platform'. Expected one of: 'IOS', 'MAC_OS', I would like to know if this value has been deprecated or if the API interface requires new version support, and how to use this value! Please help me solve it! thank you!
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.