WWDC 2025 What’s new in UIKit

iOS 26 introduces a new Liquid Glass material that brings life to an app's interface with dynamic effects. The new design system includes fluid navigation transitions, interruptible animations, and new design tools like Background Extension View and Glass Material. The update also brings menu bar support to iPad, allowing users to swipe from the top to reveal the full app menu. New menu APIs enable customization of system commands, and extensions can share menu definitions. iOS 26 introduces Swift Observable integration, automatically tracking dependencies and invalidating views as needed. The update also introduces the updateProperties method, which runs before layoutSubviews and tracks Observable objects. Additionally, iOS 26 brings HDR improvements for colors and custom content, and strongly typed notifications provide type safety. The update also introduces new SF Symbols drawing capabilities and deprecates several UIApplication-focused APIs. To get started with iOS 26, developers should compile with the latest SDK, review their app's response to the new design, and adopt new features like updateProperties and observation tracking.