What is new in UIKit on WWDC 2025?

At WWDC 2025, several new features and enhancements were introduced for UIKit. Here are the key updates:

1. New Design System: UIKit has adopted a new design system centered around a material called Liquid Glass. This material is translucent, dynamic, and enhances the visual appeal of system components like navigation bars, toolbars, and more. It provides a vibrant look with effects such as specular highlights and refraction.

2. Improved Transitions and Interactions: Slide transitions are now fluid and interruptible, allowing users to interact with content without waiting for animations to complete. This makes apps feel more responsive.

3. SwiftUI Interoperability: UIKit now has built-in support for Swift observable objects, integrating Swift observation at its core. This allows for automatic tracking of observable view references and dependencies, improving performance and reducing the need for manual updates.

4. Menu Bar on iPadOS: A new menu bar API has been introduced, bringing a familiar macOS element to iPadOS, enhancing the user experience on larger screens.

5. Container and Adaptivity Improvements: UIsplitViewController now supports inspectors, allowing additional details to be displayed alongside selected content. Columns can be resized by dragging, and the pointer adapts to indicate resize directions.

6. New APIs and Tools: New APIs for customizing menus, adopting the UpdateProperties method, and observation tracking have been introduced to streamline code and improve performance.

For a detailed overview, you can watch the session What’s new in UIKit (00:59) which covers the new design system and other enhancements.