How to migrate my app from AppDelegate to UIScene
Asked on 2025-06-25
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To migrate your app from AppDelegate
to UIScene
, you should adopt the UI Scene lifecycle, which is becoming mandatory in future iOS releases. Here are some steps and considerations based on the sessions from WWDC:
-
Adopt UI Scene Lifecycle: Starting with iOS 26, any UIKit app built with the latest SDK will be required to use the UI Scene lifecycle. This means that the traditional
AppDelegate
methods will be deprecated, and you will need to implement scene-based lifecycle methods. -
Scene Configuration: In your
AppDelegate
, you will need to determine the scene configuration for a connecting session. This involves implementing theapplication(_:configurationForConnecting:options:)
method to return aUISceneConfiguration
object. -
Scene Delegate: Each scene in your app will have its own
SceneDelegate
that manages the lifecycle of that scene. You will need to implement methods such asscene(_:willConnectTo:options:)
to set up your scene's initial UI and state. -
State Restoration: Scenes independently save and restore their UI state. You can handle state restoration by implementing methods like
scene(_:restoreInteractionStateWith:)
in yourSceneDelegate
. -
Mixing SwiftUI and UIKit: You can now mix SwiftUI and UIKit scene types in a single app, which provides flexibility and allows you to leverage the strengths of both frameworks.
For more detailed guidance, you can refer to the session Make your UIKit app more flexible (00:58) and What’s new in UIKit (17:45) which cover the adoption of the UI Scene lifecycle and its benefits.

Make your UIKit app more flexible
Find out how your UIKit app can become more flexible on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro by using scenes and container view controllers. Learn to unlock your app’s full potential by transitioning from an app-centric to a scene-based lifecycle, including enhanced window resizing and improved multitasking. Explore enhancements to UISplitViewController, such as interactive column resizing and first-class support for inspector columns. And make your views and controls more adaptive by adopting new layout APIs.

What’s new in UIKit
Modernize your app with the latest APIs in UIKit, including enhanced menu bar support, automatic observation tracking, a new UI update method, and improvements to animations. We’ll also cover how you can include SwiftUI scenes in your UIKit app and explore SF Symbols, HDR color pickers, and more.

Explore new advances in App Intents
Explore all the new enhancements available in the App Intents framework in this year’s releases. Learn about developer quality-of-life improvements like deferred properties, new capabilities like interactive app intents snippets, entity view annotations, how to integrate Visual Intelligence, and much more. We’ll take you through how App Intents is more expressive than ever, while becoming even easier and smoother to adopt. We’ll also share exciting new clients of App Intents this year like Spotlight and Visual Intelligence, and learn to write app intents that work great in those contexts.