what's new in design this year

Asked on 2024-07-30

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This year at WWDC, Apple introduced several exciting updates in design across various frameworks and platforms. Here are some of the key highlights:

UIKit

  • Document Launch Experience: Redesigned launch experience for document-based apps, allowing for full control over launch views and design, and first-class support for template document creation.
  • Tabs and Sidebar: Major updates to tabs and sidebar, providing more flexibility and a more delightful user interface.
  • Fluid Transitions: Support for new fluid transitions across the system, enhancing the overall user experience.

SwiftUI

  • Custom Visual Effects: New text renderer API enabling advanced visual effects and playful animations, such as karaoke word highlighting.
  • TabView API: Enhanced flexibility for sidebar-based iPad or tvOS apps.
  • Graphics Capabilities: New mix modifier on color for blending colors, extended custom shader feature, and fine-grained control of scroll views.
  • Custom Containers and Mesh Gradients: New APIs for creating custom containers and beautiful mesh gradients.
  • Scrolling Customizations: More programmatic control over scroll views, including detecting view visibility changes due to scrolling.

AppKit

  • SF Symbols: New symbol effects like wiggle, rotate, and breathe, along with new playback options for these effects.
  • Save Panel: Standard file format picker in macOS Sequoia, simplifying the process of selecting file formats when saving documents.

Platforms State of the Union

  • Interoperability: Improved interoperability between SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit, including shared foundations for gesture recognition and animations.
  • Customizations: New options to customize window behavior and styling in macOS, and custom hover effects for visionOS.

For more detailed information, you can check out the following sessions:

Relevant Sessions

  1. What’s new in UIKit
  2. Platforms State of the Union
  3. What’s new in SwiftUI
  4. What’s new in AppKit
Create enhanced spatial computing experiences with ARKit

Create enhanced spatial computing experiences with ARKit

Learn how to create captivating immersive experiences with ARKit’s latest features. Explore ways to use room tracking and object tracking to further engage with your surroundings. We’ll also share how your app can react to changes in your environment’s lighting on this platform. Discover improvements in hand tracking and plane detection which can make your spatial experiences more intuitive.

What’s new in UIKit

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 AppKit

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.