Is there a UITabBar replacement?
Asked on 06/11/2025
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There is no direct replacement for UITabBar, but there are enhancements and new APIs that provide more flexibility and customization options for tab bars in UIKit and SwiftUI.
In recent updates, the tab bar can adapt into a sidebar, allowing for a more integrated navigation experience across different devices, such as iPad and Mac. The new UITab and UITabGroup APIs in UIKit allow for better description of app hierarchies and enable seamless transitions between tab bars and sidebars. This is particularly useful for apps with complex navigation structures.
For more details, you can refer to the session Make your UIKit app more flexible (08:26) and Elevate your tab and sidebar experience in iPadOS (04:07).
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.
Build a UIKit app with the new design
Update your UIKit app to take full advantage of the new design system. We’ll dive into key changes to tab views, split views, bars, presentations, search, and controls, and show you how to use Liquid Glass in your custom UI. To get the most out of this video, we recommend first watching “Get to know the new design system” for general design guidance.
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.