What's new in UIKit in 2025?

Asked on 06/12/2025

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In 2025, UIKit introduced several new features and enhancements. Here are some of the key updates:

  1. New Design System: The introduction of a new material called Liquid Glass, which is translucent, dynamic, and enhances the visual depth of UI components. This material is applied to various elements like navigation bars, toolbars, and alerts, providing a more modern and fluid look.

  2. Improved Transitions and Animations: 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: New UIKit APIs for the menu bar have been introduced, bringing the familiar macOS element to iPadOS. This allows for more flexible and powerful app designs on iPad.

  5. Scene-Based Life Cycle: UIKit is moving towards a scene-based life cycle, deprecating many UI application-focused APIs. This change aims to make apps more portable and flexible across different devices and platforms.

  6. HDR Color Support: UIKit now supports HDR colors, allowing for richer and more vibrant displays on compatible devices.

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.

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What’s new in UIKit

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.

Build a SwiftUI app with the new design

Build a SwiftUI app with the new design

Explore the ways Liquid Glass transforms the look and feel of your app. Discover how this stunning new material enhances toolbars, controls, and app structures across platforms, providing delightful interactions and seamlessly integrating your app with the system. Learn how to adopt new APIs that can help you make the most of Liquid Glass.

Build a UIKit app with the new design

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.