what's new in UIKit?

In the WWDC 2024 session titled What’s new in UIKit, several enhancements and new features for UIKit in iOS 18 were introduced. Here are the key updates:

1. Document Launch Experience:

   • Redesigned launch experience for document-based apps, allowing full control over launch views and design.
   • First-class support for template document creation to guide users in creating their first document.

2. Tabs and Sidebar Updates:

   • Major updates to tabs and sidebar, including a new API to better describe app hierarchy to UITabBarController.
   • New syntax in SwiftUI for TabView to catch common errors at build time and ensure consistent selection types.

3. Fluid Transitions:

   • Support for new fluid transitions across the system, enhancing the sense of continuity in apps by keeping the same UI elements on screen during transitions.

4. SwiftUI and UIKit Interoperability:

   • Enhanced interoperability between SwiftUI and UIKit, making it easier to use them interchangeably in apps.
   • Ability to use SwiftUI animation types to animate UIKit views, including custom animations and gesture-driven animations.

5. Gesture Recognizers:

   • New UIJsRecognizerRepresentable protocol to add existing UIKit gesture recognizers directly to SwiftUI hierarchies.

6. Automatic Trait Tracking:

   • Improved trait system that propagates data to view controllers and views, making it easier to handle changes.

7. List Improvements:

   • New header and footer configurations that automatically update appearance from the list environment trait.
   • New constructors for UIBackgroundConfiguration to simplify code.

8. UIUpdateLink:

   • New UIUpdateLink in iOS 18, similar to CADisplayLink, but with more features like automatic view tracking and low latency mode for drawing applications.

For more detailed information, you can watch the session What’s new in UIKit.