What’s new in UIKit in 2024?

Generated on 8/1/2024

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In 2024, UIKit has introduced several new features and improvements in iOS 18. Here are the key updates:

  1. Document Launch Experience: There is a redesigned launch experience for document-based apps, allowing them to showcase their distinctive identity with full control over the launch views and design. This includes first-class support for template document creation, enhancing the user experience when creating their first document.

  2. Tabs and Sidebar Updates: Major updates have been made to tabs and sidebars, including a new API to better describe your app hierarchy to UITabBarController. You can create UITab instances to represent each top-level section of the app and assign them to the tabs property on the tab bar controller. Changes made to the UITab instance are reflected immediately where the tab is displayed.

  3. Fluid Transitions: Support for new fluid transitions across the system has been added, enhancing the sense of continuity in your app by keeping the same UI elements on screen during transitions.

  4. SwiftUI Integration: UIKit now has enhanced interoperability with SwiftUI, making it easier to use them interchangeably in apps. You can use SwiftUI animation types to animate UIKit views, allowing for fluid gesture-driven animations using SwiftUI's spring animation.

  5. Gesture Recognizers: Gesture recognition has been factored out of UIKit, enabling the use of any built-in or custom UI gesture recognizer in your SwiftUI view hierarchy.

  6. List Improvements: There are improvements to lists, making them more efficient and customizable.

  7. SF Symbol Animations: New animations for SF Symbols have been introduced, allowing for more dynamic and engaging UI elements.

  8. Sensory Feedback: Enhancements in sensory feedback provide a more immersive user experience.

  9. Text Improvements: There are various improvements to text handling and rendering, making it easier to create visually appealing and readable text in your apps.

  10. Menu Actions: New menu actions have been added, providing more options for user interactions.

  11. Apple Pencil Pro and PencilKit: Support for Apple Pencil Pro and updates to PencilKit have been introduced, enhancing the capabilities for apps that utilize these tools.

For a detailed overview, you can watch the session What’s new in UIKit.

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