Category: Apple Developer News

Welcome to Wednesday at WWDC! We’re almost halfway through the week, and there’s so much still to come. But first: Let’s get the dispatch from day 2.

WWDC22 Day 2 recap

Ready for your Day 2 briefing? Catch up on all the great sessions from Tuesday and get a sneak peek at the day ahead.

Spin the music of WWDC

Whether you want a musical break or some bluesy background beats, you can drop the needle on the official WWDC playlists right now.

Listen to WWDC22 playlists on Apple Music

Spotlight on Digital Lounges and labs

If you haven’t registered for Digital Lounges this week, you’re missing out on great discussions, SwiftUI watch parties, and a truly… iconic… monochrome pixel art challenge.

But don’t fret: Even if you miss a day, you can catch up at any time this week by joining us on Slack and reading through past messages.

Register for Digital Lounges

And we’ve got another packed day today: Join us on Slack for live text-based watch parties of “Build a desktop-class iPad app” and “Compose custom layouts with SwiftUI,” ask questions about RoomPlan, WidgetKit, and Shortcuts, and join the Accessibility team for a community panel.

We’re also hosting dedicated labs for Accessibility, CarPlay, App Intents, Design, Xcode, and much much more.

Request a WWDC22 lab appointment

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! You can check out our complete schedule on the WWDC tab in the Developer app or on developer.apple.com.

Meet the new Human Interface Guidelines

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) is a comprehensive resource for designers and developers looking to create great experiences across Apple platforms. Now, it’s been fully redesigned and refreshed to meet your needs — from your first sketch to the final pixel. Take a moment this Wednesday and explore the new guidelines.

Meet the new Human Interface Guidelines

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) is a comprehensive resource for designers and developers looking to create great experiences across Apple platforms. Now, it’s been fully redesigned and refreshed to meet your needs — from your first sketch to the final pixel.

Human Interface Guidelines

Sign up for a sci-fi challenge

Floating numbers! Neon code screens! Expand your reality in today’s SwiftUI science fiction challenge, where you’ll create a futuristic-looking screen that will bend the very fabric of spacetime (or at least look really cool). To join, visit the SwiftUI Study Hall in the Digital Lounges, where you can also ask questions, connect with other devs, and share your progress.

Ready to take on more challenges? Over in the Design lounge, we’re inviting you to put your sonic skills to good use and manipulate audio from Apple sound designers with Apple sensing frameworks. Elsewhere, you can try your hand at creating or drawing with metal-cpp, designing Lock Screen widgets with WidgetKit, and expanding your iPhone app to iPad and Mac.

Have a great Wednesday — we’ll see you tomorrow for Day 4 of WWDC!

Meet the new Human Interface Guidelines

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) is a comprehensive resource for designers and developers looking to create great experiences across Apple platforms. Now, it’s been fully redesigned and refreshed to meet your needs — from your first sketch to the final pixel.

Human Interface Guidelines

The HIG has merged its platform-specific guidance into a unified document, making it simpler to explore common design approaches while still preserving relevant details about each platform. The overhauled navigation also helps you browse components, technologies, design patterns, and foundational principles: Larger sections include a visual index, while each individual page features links to related resources like videos, articles, and API documentation. You can also search directly within the HIG to find a specific page. And coming later this year, the HIG will sport change logs that record updates and edits as they happen — both for each updated page and for the entire set of guidelines.

The HIG is deeply rooted in the design principles Apple helped pioneer decades ago. It has a rich legacy that reaches back to the early days of the graphical user interface and is a living document that provides the latest design guidance for Apple platforms, adapting to new devices, technologies, and updates.

Whether you’re just starting out or a veteran Apple developer, the HIG is a key resource for creating amazing experiences on all platforms.

June 7, 2022

Bring valuable weather information to your apps and services through a wide range of data that can help people stay up to date, safe, and prepared. It’s easy to use WeatherKit in your apps with a platform-specific Swift API, and on any other platform with a REST API.

Learn about WeatherKit

WWDC isn’t only about exploring the brand-new frameworks and APIs — it’s also an excuse to give yourself time to experiment and play with the APIs that already exist. Whether you’ve got a problem you’ve been itching to solve or you just want a blank canvas to try out an animation or view, Swift Playgrounds makes it easy to build apps and projects. And that’s what we’re inviting you to do with this challenge: play!

Begin the challenge

Today is all about experimentation and having fun: Download the Swift Playgrounds app on iPad or Mac and experiment with an existing framework, idea, animation, or app concept that you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t had the time to explore. Discover the tools available, incorporate packages, build prototypes, and most importantly, enjoy yourself!

Download Swift Playgrounds for macOS

Download Swift Playgrounds for iOS

Learn more about Swift Playgrounds

You can collaborate on this challenge with others in the Digital Lounges Study Hall, or explore a solo challenge. And if you have questions about the app or building your own software, you can meet the presenter behind “Build your first app in Swift Playgrounds” for a text-based conversation and short group Q&A.

Make something you want to share with the world? Feel free to show it off in the Digital Lounges or on Twitter using #WWDC22Challenges.

Explore #WWDC22Challenges on social media

Read the WWDC22 Challenges Terms and Conditions

Move over, Taco Tuesday. This week, it’s Toolbar Transformation Tuesday! With iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, you can now adopt powerful productivity improvements in your app like customizable bar button items, inline search bars, and document menu support.

So today, we’re challenging you to transform your own toolbars. We also welcome you to visit the UI Frameworks Study Hall during the day to collaborate on this challenge! Ask questions, connect with other developers, and share your creations.

Begin the challenge

The transformation all starts with Xcode 14: download the app and and check out your existing projects within it. We also recommend watching “Meet desktop-class iPad” and “Adopt desktop-class editing interactions” from WWDC22 to explore the possibilities for your UI.

• WWDC22

Meet desktop-class iPad

Learn how you can bring desktop-class features to your iPad app. Explore updates to UINavigationBar that bring more discoverability and customizability to your app’s features. Find out how the latest updates to UIKit can help make it easier and faster for people to explore content in your app….

• WWDC22

Adopt desktop-class editing interactions

Discover advanced desktop-class editing features that can help people accelerate their productivity in your app. Learn how you can provide more interactions inline with your UI to help people quickly access editing features and make your iPadOS app feel right at home on macOS with Mac Catalyst….

Begin the transformation for your app by exploring buried functionality and adding items to the center section of the toolbar. Check out all the available customization options that can make it easy for people to put the tools they need front and center.

You can also try adding a title menu with UINavigationItem.titleMenuProvider to enable workflows that cover the entire document; centralize sharing and drag and drop by adopting UIDocumentProperties; and power up your searches by adding search suggestions to help people find exactly what they’ve been seeking.

We’d love to check out your progress! Show us what you’ve made in the Digital Lounges or on Twitter with the hashtag #WWDC22Challenges. If you’d like to discuss toolbars and other UI frameworks topics, join the team at events all throughout the week at WWDC22. And — if you’re so moved — please enjoy a taco today in celebration.

Explore #WWDC22Challenges on social media

Read the WWDC22 Challenges Terms and Conditions

Learn more about a critical assistive technology this WWDC and solve a matching game using only Switch Control!

We’re inviting you to expand your skillset and familarize yourself with Switch Control, an assistive technology used by mobility-impaired individuals to help navigate and operate iOS. We’ll show you how to set up a screen switch, use automatic scanning, and control the Switch Control menu system. From there, dive deeper and learn how you can customize and enhance the experience for people using Switch Control through a specific accessibility API.

You can share your progress with others on this challenge in the Digital Lounges Study Hall, or explore a solo challenge.

Begin the challenge

To start this challenge, you’ll need to first download and run the sample code project and set up Switch Control.

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Note: This project requires an iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or iPadOS 16. You won’t be able to to run it in Simulator.

WWDC22 Challenge: Learn Switch Control through gaming

Configure and enable Switch Control

Switch Control is an accessibility feature that helps you interact with your device using a variety of software and hardware switches. These can be located on the screen, and can use the camera, sounds, or connected accessories.

First, configure the switch you’ll need for the challenge:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Choose Accessibility > Switch Control > Switches.
3. Select Add New Switch.
4. Add a switch by navigating to Switches > Screen Switch > Full Screen. Choose Select Item.

Choose your scanning time in Auto Scanning Time. The default is one second, which means the Switch Control focus will wait one second on each element before moving on to the next. You can adjust this time as you like.

Alternatively, you can choose Bluetooth Devices, select a device to use as a switch, and select an action for that switch.

After you’ve finished setting up your switch, you’re ready to enable Switch Control on your device. If you don’t typically use Switch Control, you can set up an Accessibility Shortcut to quickly enable or disable it for the purposes of this challenge. Here’s how:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Choose Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut.
3. Select Switch Control. Make sure this is the only enabled item in the list.

You can now triple-click the Side button or Home button on your device to trigger the Accessibility Shortcut and toggle Switch Control on or off.

Set up the challenge

Now that you’ve got Switch Control enabled, it’s time to explore the project.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and select Switch Control.
2. Download the Xcode project and run it on your iPad or iPhone.

Once the app is running, you can match two boxes with the same symbol by tapping one on the screen while Switch Control is focused on a box. Then choose Tap in the Switch Control menu. Then, select the other matching item. Repeat until all icons have been exposed to solve the challenge!

Figured out the puzzle? Post your accomplishment on Twitter with the hashtag #WWDC22Challenges. And if you’d like to discuss Switch Control and other accessibility topics, join the team at events all throughout the week at WWDC22.

Accessibility & Inclusion

Explore #WWDC22Challenges on social media

Read the WWDC22 Challenges Terms and Conditions

Ready to show off your pixel perfect design skills? We’re challenging you to embrace the constraints of a grid and design an app icon at pixel level using only black and white colors. When we design icons today, we create work for high-resolution HDR screens, with millions of pixels and color at our disposal. But there’s joy in embracing a bit of retro restraint: pixel grids can help you distill the essence of your design and make sure your icon is clear and understandable at all sizes.

Pixel icons have a rich history on the Mac. MacPaint was a raster graphics editor released as part of the original Macintosh in 1984, and its icons were playful, simple and recognizable to people around the world. Many of the defining icons for modern drawing and design tools – such as the paint brush, lasso, and hand tool – were originally created for MacPaint by Susan Kare, one of the original designers for the Mac.

Kare designed these icons with the monochromatic limits of the first Mac display in mind, using a grid-lined notebook to map out each pixel. While we’re no longer limited by hardware, you can explore those same design principles to help you create fun, interesting, and visually stunning icons.

Begin the challenge

We’re inviting you to create an app icon at pixel level using only black and white colors on a 48×48 pixel, 32×32 pixel, or 16×16 pixel canvas. You may design for every size, for two sizes, or just one size. You can draw your icon on paper or using your favorite program; we’ve also provided a pixel grid for download.

Download a pixel grid for the challenge

• Before you start drawing on the canvas, think about your goal: Are you designing a brand new app icon, or recreating something that already exists?
• Once you’ve decided, explore a single element that captures the essence of the app, and express that element in a simple, unique shape. For example, the Mail app icon uses an envelope, which is universally associated with mail.
• Add details cautiously. If the content or shape is overly complex, details can be hard to discern. Icons at all three sizes should generally match in appearance, although you can explore subtle, richer, or more detailed additions at 48×48 pixel size.

Explore #WWDC22Challenges on social media

Read the WWDC22 Challenges Terms and Conditions

What’s piping hot, golden-crusted, and filled with mystery ingredients? A divine hotdish, you betcha! But this SwiftUI challenge doesn’t involve tater tots or cream of mushroom soup; in fact, we’re inviting you to throw away the recipe book and mix up your own ingredients for a new kind of navigation supper.

Prep your ChallengeContentView to create a hotdish of your own, mixing together SwiftUI navigation ingredients like stack view, multicolumn layout, and state restoration.

Begin the challenge

Before you become a SwiftUI hotdish chef, it’s important to understand the techniques behind a variety of recipes. Make sure to watch The SwiftUI Cookbook for Navigation from WWDC22 to get started on your culinary adventure.

The SwiftUI cookbook for navigation

The recipe for a great app begins with a clear and robust navigation structure. Join the SwiftUI team in our proverbial coding kitchen and learn how you can cook up a great experience for your app. We’ll introduce you to SwiftUI’s navigation stack and split view features, show you how you can…

For this dish, you’ll be cooking with the “Bringing robust navigation structure to your SwiftUI app” sample code. Download it to your device to start the challenge.

Bringing robust navigation structure to your SwiftUI app

You can get a feel for your SwiftUI ingredients by exploring and modifying StackContentView, TwoColumnContentView, or ThreeColumnContentView in the project.

Once you’re feeling ready, head to the ChallengeContentView, where you can mix and match any navigation ingredients you might need to craft a prize-winning hotdish! (You can even pick up a few new APIs from “What’s new in SwiftUI” to add some spice to your meal.) Incorporate your own app’s ingredients and voila! You’ve got a secret recipe for the ages. 

What’s new in SwiftUI

It’s a SwiftUI party — and you’re invited! Join us as we share the latest updates and a glimpse into the future of UI framework design. Discover deep levels of customization, advanced techniques for layout, elegant strategies for sharing, and rock-solid structural approaches for designing an app…

Explore #WWDC22Challenges on social media

Read the WWDC22 Challenges Terms and Conditions

We’ve been waiting all year to say it: WWDC is here! And after a packed day 1, we’re ready to get down to business — it’s time to check out the new sessions, labs, and Digital Lounges. Here’s a brief day 1 rundown along with some highlights to get excited about.

Revisit a very big Day 1

Want to catch up on Monday’s excitement? Your mission is to watch the official debrief, where you’ll find out about the exciting announcements and new technologies unveiled at WWDC22 — and learn more about what’s in store for the rest of the week.

WWDC22 Day 1 recap

It’s time for your Day 1 report from Apple HQ. Check out all the exciting announcements and new technologies unveiled at WWDC22 — and learn more about what’s coming tomorrow.

Have a bit more time on your hands? Check out full replays of Keynote, Platforms State of the Union, and the Apple Design Awards.

Watch the Keynote

Watch the Platforms State of the Union

Watch the Apple Design Awards

Welcome to the Developer Center and Apple Park

On the eve of WWDC, we invited developers to the new Apple Developer Center — a world-class facility designed for our worldwide community to meet, learn from, and collaborate with Apple — and then over to Apple Park to take in screenings of Keynote “Being in a space like this gives you chills,” said Vitalii Mogylevets, creator of the Apple Design Award-nominated Waterllama. “It feels like you’re a part of something really big.” Check out these pictures from an incredible day.

Celebrate the winners of the Apple Design Awards

12 apps and games became Apple Design Award winners on Monday, winning in categories like Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation. “We couldn’t believe it,” says Charles Bardin, creator of A Musical Story, which won for innovation in games. “We thought, ‘OK, we’re very small, we’re just happy to be here.’ But it means a lot that a big company recognizes our work.”

For others, it meant a validation of years of effort. “When we won, I was thinking, ‘I wish the whole team could be here,” said Amanda Schofield, co-founder and and creative director at Studio Drydock, which won for its game Wylde Flowers. “Every single person put everything they had into it.”

Missed the Apple Design Awards? Read more about each winner on the Apple Developer website.

Explore the winners of the WWDC22 Apple Design Awards

Explore the Digital Lounges and labs

It’s a packed first day of Digital Lounges and labs. Don’t miss a few favorites:

• Design labs are open all week — request an appointment for a conversation about the latest design principles, best practices, design patterns, and more.
• Meet the team behind “What’s New in SwiftUI” and join a text-based watch party for the session, followed by a short Q&A.
• Meet the Accessibility team in an icebreaker session where you chat about your favorite WWDC moments and share tips and tricks.
• Meet the presenter of “Bring Continuity Camera to Your macOS app,” and stick around after for a short Q&A. And that’s just for starters.

Tune in to the WWDC jukebox

The WWDC playlists are here! Spin up WWDC22 playlists for the perfect soundtrack to your day — no matter what kind of day it might be. Find official curated mixes to help you Power Up, Focus, Chill, and Energy.

Listen to WWDC22 playlists on Apple Music

Have fun out there, and we’ll see you tomorrow for Day 3!

June 6, 2022

The Apple Design Awards celebrate apps and games that excel in the categories of Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation. Learn about the winning apps and the talented developers behind them.

Discover the winners