what are the major changes in AppKit
Generated on 7/31/2024
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The major changes in AppKit presented at WWDC 2024 include:
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New macOS Features:
- Enhanced writing tools that help with spelling, grammar, structure, clarity, and tone.
- System-wide integration of these writing tools, providing automatic intelligence features in apps.
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SwiftUI Integrations:
- Improved interoperability between SwiftUI and AppKit, allowing for better integration and use of SwiftUI features within AppKit apps.
- New APIs for building menus and animations with SwiftUI.
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API Refinements:
- New ways to open context menus, including the ability to use the keyboard to open a context menu for the currently focused UI element.
- New capabilities in the text system and SF Symbols.
- New convenience features for saving documents.
- Introduction of new cursors, such as zoom in and zoom out cursors.
- More control over toolbars, including enhancements to NSToolbar for better display mode and item control.
- An exciting new API to assist with text input.
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Context Menu Refinements:
- Customizable positioning of context menus when presented with the keyboard.
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Text Highlighting and Entry Suggestions:
- New features for text highlighting and text entry suggestions to enhance user experience.
For a detailed overview, you can refer to the session "What’s new in AppKit" (00:00:07).
Relevant Sessions
What’s new in AppKit
Discover the latest advances in Mac app development. Get an overview of the new features in macOS Sequoia, and how to adopt them in your app. Explore new ways to integrate your existing code with SwiftUI. Learn about the improvements made to numerous AppKit controls, like toolbars, menus, text input, and more.
Platforms State of the Union
Discover the newest advancements on Apple platforms.
Evolve your document launch experience
Make your document-based app stand out, and bring its unique identity into focus with the new document launch experience. Learn how to leverage the new API to customize the first screen people see when they launch your app. Utilize the new system-provided design, and amend it with custom actions, delightful decorative views, and impressive animations.
What’s new in UIKit
Explore everything new in UIKit, including tab and document launch experiences, transitions, and text and input changes. We’ll also discuss better-than-ever interoperability between UIKit and SwiftUI animations and gestures, as well as general improvements throughout UIKit.
What’s new in SwiftUI
Learn how you can use SwiftUI to build great apps for any Apple platform. Explore a fresh new look and feel for tabs and documents on iPadOS. Improve your window management with new windowing APIs, and gain more control over immersive spaces and volumes in your visionOS apps. We’ll also take you through other exciting refinements that help you make expressive charts, customize and layout text, and so much more.
Elevate your tab and sidebar experience in iPadOS
iPadOS 18 introduces a new navigation system that gives people the flexibility to choose between using a tab bar or sidebar. The newly redesigned tab bar provides more space for content and other functionality. Learn how to use SwiftUI and UIKit to enable customization features – like adding, removing and reordering tabs – to enable a more personal touch in your app.