Category: Apple Developer News

The final day of WWDC is upon us — but before we power down, here’s a look at some of the activities and sessions available today.

Get ready for day five

We’ve saved some of the best for last. Pop into Slack to learn more about Metal, meet some super SwiftUI presenters, and explore spatial computing.

Q&A: Games for visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. We would love to brainstorm, answer questions, and meet folks that are excited to build games for Vision Pro.

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Q&A: Bring your ARKit app to visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about bringing your existing ARKit app on iOS or iPadOS to visionOS during this hour long text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: SwiftUI for visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: Spatial design

Join the Apple Design team in this 1 hour text-based Q&A on spatial design. Bring your questions about UI and UX best practices for creating a great experience on visionOS.

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Q&A: Metal

Ask Apple Metal engineers about the latest tools, techniques, and technologies during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Meet the presenters: Design with SwiftUI

Meet the presenters of “Design with SwiftUI” and join a text-based watch party followed by a short Q&A. The watch party begins 5 minutes after the start of this activity — so don’t be late!

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In today’s new sessions, you can learn to animate with springs, explore Core Motion, and get a taste of the SwiftUI cookbook for focus.

Animate with springs

Discover how you can bring life to your app with animation! We’ll show you how to create amazing animations when you take advantage of springs and help you learn how to use them in your app.

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What’s new in Core Motion

Learn how you can use the latest Core Motion updates to expand how your app uses motion data. Discover how to stream higher-frequency sensor data when recording a HealthKit workout on Apple Watch. We’ll show you how you can get submersion data — including water depth and temperature — during…

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The SwiftUI cookbook for focus

The SwiftUI team is back in the coding “kitchen” with powerful tools to shape your app’s focus experience. Join us and learn about the staple ingredients that support focus-driven interactions in your app. Discover focus interactions for custom views, find out about key-press handlers for…

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Elevate your windowed app for spatial computing

Discover how you can bring your multiplatform SwiftUI app to visionOS and the Shared Space. We’ll show you how to add the visionOS destination to an existing app and view your app in the Simulator. Explore how your SwiftUI code automatically adapts to support the unique context and presentation…

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It’s your last chance to take part in Dev Tools Trivia Time! Plus, make new friends at the Friday icebreaker.

Dev Tools Trivia Time

Trivia Night returns to the Developer Tools channel! Test your trivia knowledge with multiple-choice questions on WWDC23 sessions, tools, frameworks, and Apple history.

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Immersive icebreaker

In this lightning-round icebreaker, chat with Apple engineers who work on visionOS and the developer community to share ideas, discuss favorite sessions, and get to know each other.

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Check out podcasts from WWDC

Catch up on the week with podcasts from developers and developer advocates, recorded at Apple Park.

Apple Bitz XL

Connected

The Vergecast

Waveform

Send us your feedback

We’d love to know what you liked about WWDC23 — and how we can do even better. Send in your feedback about this year’s conference.

Take the WWDC23 survey

And that’s a wrap!

Thanks for being part of another incredible WWDC. It’s been a fantastic week of meeting and celebrating, connecting online through labs and activities, and exploring all the new sessions. We appreciate the opportunity to share all of this with you.

Every year, the Swift Student Challenge recognizes students all over the world who’ve created remarkable app playgrounds.

The 2023 edition drew submissions from more than 30 countries and regions, and covered topics as varied as healthcare, sports, entertainment, and the environment. And while the submissions were diverse, their creators had a common goal: To share their passions with the world through coding.

Coding gives me the freedom to feel like an artist — my canvas is the code editor, and my brush is the keyboard.

Yemi Agesin, 2023 Swift Student Challenge winner

This year, Apple increased the number of winners from 350 to 375 to recognize even more students for their artistry and ingenuity — and we’re proud to introduce three of them. Meet first-time Swift Student Challenge winners Asmi Jain, Yemi Agesin, and Marta Michelle Caliendo.

Read the full story on Apple Newsroom

Day four is here — and a fresh round of sessions, labs, and activities await.

Get started with labs and sessions

Curious about the difference between the Shared Space and a Full Space in visionOS? Want to learn more about Observable? There’s a Q&A for that. Kick off another full day by chatting with engineers and designers about SwiftUI, Xcode, and all things spatial.

Q&A: SwiftUI for visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: Build UIKit apps for visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about building UIKit for visionOS during this text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: Bring your ARKit app to visionOS

Ask Apple engineers about bringing your existing ARKit app on iOS or iPadOS to visionOS during this hour long text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: SwiftUI

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 2 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: Xcode

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 2 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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We’ve got incredible new sessions on Live Activities, Metal, spatial experiences, and more.

Design dynamic Live Activities

Live Activities allow your app to display live information in key system locations on iOS and iPadOS. Learn the best way to create graphically rich layouts that update seamlessly on the Lock Screen, in StandBy, and in the Dynamic Island. Incorporate interactivity and animation to help people stay…

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Optimize GPU renderers with Metal

Discover how to optimize your GPU renderer using the latest Metal features and best practices. We’ll show you how to use function specialization and parallel shader compilation to maintain responsive authoring workflows and the fastest rendering speeds, and help you tune your compute shaders for…

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Explore rendering for spatial computing

Find out how you can take control of RealityKit rendering to improve the look and feel of your apps and games on visionOS. Discover how you can customize lighting, add grounding shadows, and control tone mapping for your content. We’ll also go over best practices for two key treatments on the…

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Create a great spatial playback experience

Get ready to support video in your visionOS app! Take a tour of the frameworks and APIs that power video playback and learn how you can update your app to play 3D content. We’ll also share tips for customizing playback to create a more immersive watching experience.

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And there are even more exciting activities happening today, including an informal icebreaker and another fierce round of Dev Tools Trivia Time.

Immersive icebreaker

In this lightning-round icebreaker, chat with Apple engineers who work on visionOS and the developer community to share ideas, discuss favorite sessions, and get to know each other.

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Dev Tools Trivia Time

Trivia Night returns to the Developer Tools channel! Test your trivia knowledge with multiple-choice questions on WWDC23 sessions, tools, frameworks, and Apple history.

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If you haven’t signed up for a one-on-one lab this week, time is running out! Today is your last day to request an appointment for Friday. To make a request, visit the WWDC tab in the Apple Developer app or go to the WWDC labs webpage. App Store labs are also available in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Learn more about labs at WWDC23

Download the new Figma design kit

Now, by popular demand, you can download an all-new iOS and iPadOS design kit for Figma.

Apple Design Resources – iOS 17 and iPadOS 17

Discover documentation and sample code

Browse new and updated documentation and sample code to learn about the latest technologies, frameworks, and APIs introduced at WWDC23. You’ll find new ways to enhance your apps targeting the latest platform releases.

Apple Developer Documentation

Browse portraits of the 2023 Apple Design Award winners

We snapped some great portraits of our Apple Design Award-winning developers at Monday’s ceremony. Take a look at all 12 below, and then dive deeper into the stories of their apps through our Behind the Design series.

Behind the Design: 2023 Apple Design Awards

Meet 12 incredible teams from around the world and learn how they brought their winning ideas to life.

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Have fun out there, and we’ll catch you tomorrow for the final day of WWDC!

Browse new and updated documentation and sample code to learn about the latest technologies, frameworks, and APIs introduced at WWDC23. You’ll find new ways to enhance your apps targeting the latest platform releases.

Explore highlights of new technologies introduced at WWDC23

Two days are in the books — and there’s so much more to come. Get ready for another big day at WWDC.

Dive into sessions and activities

Start off in Slack, where you can connect with Apple engineers and designers on spatial design, WidgetKit, machine learning, 3D content, and much more.

Q&A: Spatial design

Join the Apple Design team in this 1 hour text-based Q&A on spatial design. Bring your questions about UI and UX best practices for creating a great experience on visionOS.

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Q&A: WidgetKit

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 2 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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Q&A: Machine learning open forum

Join us for an open forum to discuss anything related to machine learning in your app during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. Topics include Core ML, Create ML, Vision, Natural Language, Speech, Sound Analysis, TensorFlow and PyTorch model conversion, model compression, and more. Stop in to request…

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Q&A: Create 3D content for Apple platforms

Ask Apple engineers about using Reality Composer Pro, Object Capture, Reality Converter, and leveraging the USD file format for your 3D content during this hour long text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

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We’ve also posted new sessions on topics like SwiftUI, widgets, SwiftData, and Xcode test reports.

Design with SwiftUI

Discover how SwiftUI can help you quickly iterate and explore design ideas. Learn from Apple designers as they share how working with SwiftUI influenced the design of the Maps app in watchOS 10 and other elements of their work, and find out how you can incorporate these workflows in your own…

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Bring widgets to life

Learn how to make animated and interactive widgets for your apps and games. We’ll show you how to tweak animations for entry transitions and add interactivity using SwiftUI Button and Toggle so that you can create powerful moments right from the Home Screen and Lock Screen.

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Build an app with SwiftData

Discover how SwiftData can help you persist data in your app. Code along with us as we bring SwiftData to a multi-platform SwiftUI app. Learn how to convert existing model classes into SwiftData models, set up the environment, reflect model layer changes in UI, and build document-based applications…

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Fix failures faster with Xcode test reports

Discover how you can find, debug, and fix test failures faster with the test report in Xcode and Xcode Cloud. Learn how Xcode identifies failure patterns to help you find the right place to start investigating. We’ll also show you how to use the UI automation explorer and video recordings to…

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Test your knowledge in Dev Tools Trivia Time, WWDC’s fiercest competition! And come hang out with the SwiftUI team and chat about sessions, meet other members of the community, and share tips and tricks.

Dev Tools Trivia Time

Trivia Night returns to the Developer Tools channel! Test your trivia knowledge with multiple-choice questions on WWDC23 sessions, tools, frameworks, and Apple history.

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Break the SwiftUIce

Come hang out with the SwiftUI team for an hour of fun! Enjoy a text-based chat about your favorite sessions, meet other members of the SwiftUI community, share tips and tricks, and more.

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There’s still time to request lab appointments to meet one-on-one with experts about technology, design, app review, the App Store, and more. To make a request, visit the WWDC tab in the Apple Developer app or the go to the WWDC labs webpage.

Learn more about labs at WWDC23

A sneak peek at the visionOS SDK

Developers attending the special event at Apple Park visited the Apple Developer Center on Tuesday to learn more about building apps for Apple’s new spatial operating system. “Going in, I was under the impression it was going to be tricky, or hard, or ‘where do I start?’” says Paul Hudson, iOS developer and founder of Hacking with Swift. “But actually — if you take what you know and add a little bit, you can make something good and then increment from there. It doesn’t take much to get something great. That’s my main takeaway.”

Find out how developers of apps like djay, Blackbox, JigSpace, and XRHealth are starting to build for spatial computing.

Learn more about developing for visionOS

Spotlight on: Developing for visionOS

Learn how the developers behind djay, Blackbox, JigSpace, and XRHealth started designing and building apps for Apple Vision Pro.

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你好，こんにちは、Human Interface Guidelines!

The Human Interface Guidelines are now available in Chinese and Japanese! And you can check out updated design recommendations for watchOS, App Shortcuts, widgets, and all the latest platform releases.

Human Interface Guidelines

Enjoy your day and we’ll catch you tomorrow for day four!

Welcome to day two of WWDC! There’s more than ever to explore this week: Xcode is getting updated, SwiftUI is getting animated, and — did we mention? — apps are getting a lot more spatial. Here’s a guide to what happened yesterday and what’s on tap today.

Catch up on day one

For the second year in a row, we welcomed more than 1,000 developers to Apple Park for the WWDC keynote and Platforms State of the Union to learn about the future of Apple platforms.

With new frameworks, a new spatial operating system, and new hardware designed for developers, there’s an incredible amount to dig into this year. Catch up quickly with this recap of the most important big (and little!) moments from the keynote:

17 big & little things at WWDC23

Here’s your guide to some of the big (and little) things announced on the first day of WWDC.

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Want the complete experience? Here are the full replays for each event.

Keynote

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off with exciting news, inspiration, and new opportunities. Join the worldwide developer community for an in-depth look at the future of Apple platforms, directly from Apple Park.

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Platforms State of the Union

Learn about the latest tools, technologies, and advancements to help you create even better apps across Apple platforms, including the all-new visionOS.

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Meet Apple Vision Pro

On day one of WWDC, you got a peek at visionOS, Apple’s new spatial operating system — and that was just the beginning. There are familiar and new frameworks to learn, new tools like Reality Composer Pro to explore, and new in-person programs coming soon.

Learn more about developing for visionOS

Prepare your apps for visionOS

Explore sessions about visionOS

Start your Tuesday

We’re off and running with with more than 60 sessions, 100 online activities, and the opportunity to schedule one-on-one lab appointments with Apple experts. Here’s a quick look at all we’ve got in store:

What Apple developers need to know at WWDC23

There’s never been a better time to create for Apple platforms — including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and all-new visionOS. Get insights from Apple engineers and designers with over 175 brand-new instructional video sessions covering the latest in hardware and software. All to help bring your…

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Need a place to start? Check out the latest updates to watchOS 10, an introduction to SwiftData, and the principles of spatial design.

Meet watchOS 10

Discover some of the most significant changes to Apple Watch since its introduction as we tour the redesigned user interface and the new Smart Stack. Learn how Apple designers approached the design of watchOS 10 as we explore layout, navigation, and visual style, and find out how you can apply them…

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Meet SwiftData

SwiftData is a powerful and expressive persistence framework built for Swift. We’ll show you how you can model your data directly from Swift code, use SwiftData to work with your models, and integrate with SwiftUI.

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Principles of spatial design

Discover the fundamentals of spatial design. Learn how to design with depth, scale, windows, and immersion, and apply best practices for creating comfortable, human-centered experiences that transform reality. Find out how you can use these spatial design principles to extend your existing app or…

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New this year: Many session videos now offer chapter markers, so you can skip right to the content you’re looking for. (You’ll find chapter markers for the keynote, as well.)

Join us in Slack to connect with the presenters of sessions like “Meet SwiftUI for spatial computing” and “What’s new in SwiftUI” and join Q&As about game design, Xcode 15, and much more.

Meet the presenter: Meet SwiftUI for spatial computing

Meet the team behind “Meet SwiftUI for spatial computing” and join a text-based watch party followed by a short Q&A. The watch party begins 5 minutes after the start of this activity — so don’t be late!

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Meet the presenters: What’s new in SwiftUI

Meet the team behind “What’s new in SwiftUI” and join a text-based watch party followed by a short Q&A. The watch party begins 5 minutes after the start of this activity — so don’t be late!

View now

Q&A: Games

Ask Apple game technology engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 1 hour text-based Q&A. We would love to brainstorm, answer questions, and meet folks that are excited to build and bring games to Apple platforms. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level…

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Q&A: Xcode

Ask Apple engineers about the latest tools, technologies, and frameworks during this 2 hour text-based Q&A. Stop in to request guidance on a code-level question, ask for clarifications, or learn from others.

View now

Dev Tools Trivia Time is bigger and better than ever — test your knowledge in WWDC’s fiercest competition!

Dev Tools Trivia Time

Trivia Night returns to the Developer Tools channel! Test your trivia knowledge with multiple-choice questions on WWDC23 sessions, tools, frameworks, and Apple history.

View now

And connect with Apple experts directly by requesting one-on-one lab appointments for answers to your questions about technology, design, and maximizing your App Store presence. To make a request, visit the WWDC tab in the Apple Developer app or go to the WWDC labs webpage.

Learn more about labs at WWDC23

Congrats to the 2023 Apple Design Award winners

Yesterday, we handed out the 2023 Apple Design Awards and added 12 new titles to the list of the greatest apps and games ever created for Apple platforms. Check out the complete list of 2023 winners and finalists below. Then, get up close and personal with the winning developers, designers, and teams in our Behind the Design series.

Discover the 2023 Apple Design Award winners

Behind the Design: 2023 Apple Design Awards

Meet 12 incredible teams from around the world and learn how they brought their winning ideas to life.

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Press play: WWDC23 playlists are here

Lastly, here’s an audio gift for you! Spin up our official playlists — the perfect soundtrack to an incredible week.

Playlist: WWDC 2023

Playlist: WWDC23 Power Up

Playlist: WWDC23 Coding Focus

Playlist: WWDC23 Coding Energy

Playlist: WWDC23 Coding Chill

That’s it for now. Have a great day, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Online labs and activities are a great way to connect with Apple engineers, designers, and experts all week long.

One-on-one labs

Get personalized guidance about development basics, complex concepts, and everything in between. Learn how to implement new Apple technologies, explore UI design principles, improve your App Store presence, and much more.

Activities

There are plenty of exciting activities happening daily on Slack.

• Ask engineering and design questions in Q&As.
• Join or follow real-time conversations while watching session videos together, and stay for a Q&A with the presenter.
• Get to know other developers and teams from Apple in community icebreakers.
• Test your trivia expertise starting on June 6.

Labs and activities are open to all members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program, as well as 2023 Swift Student Challenge applicants.

Register for labs

Register for activities

Learn about WWDC23

Every year, the Behind the Design series takes a special look at the remarkable teams behind the Apple Design Award-winning apps and games. Read on to meet 12 incredible teams from around the world and learn how they brought their winning ideas to life.

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Winners in the category provide a great experience for all by supporting people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilites, and languages.

Universe

Launched in 2017, the powerful, versatile, and almost unbelievably simple Universe makes creating a website as easy as building with blocks. The app operates on a grid system. To create a site, add blocks to the grid, and to edit a site, move those blocks around. The app doesn’t just remove barriers, it bulldozes them. “Our goal is making this technology available to everybody,” says founder Joseph Cohen.

Behind the Design: Universe

Discover how Universe makes creating a website as easy as building with blocks.

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stitch.

For all its many genres and styles, the gaming world has been awfully threadbare when it comes to experiences about embroidery. That all changes with stitch., a charming cross between casual puzzler, meditative exercise, and afternoon craft project — and as cross-generational a game as you’re likely to find. “We pride ourselves on making games that anyone can play,” says Jakob Lykkegaard, founder of Lykke Studios, the team behind stitch. “It’s important to spend the time to make them available for everyone.”

Behind the Design: stitch.

Find out how Lykke Studios sewed up its embroidery-themed puzzle game.

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Winners in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences that are enhanced by Apple technologies.

Duolingo

What makes Duolingo such an engaging way to learn a language? The answer is hiding in plain sight. “The secret to Duolingo is that we’re not an education company. We’re a fun and motivation company,” says Ryan Sims, VP of design. “Fun is the most important part of the work we do.”

Behind the Design: Duolingo

Learn the design strategies behind the language app’s incredible success.

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Afterplace

At first glance, Evan Kice’s Afterplace appears to have time-traveled from the late 1980s. But it’s a decidedly modern game too — fast, fluid, and incredibly easy to pick up. Enemies lurk everywhere and levels stretch out in all directions; what looks like a humble library is secretly a multilevel maze. “I always loved it when a game just kept going,” says Kice. “I was fascinated by the idea that a game could hold an entire country.”

Behind the Design: Afterplace

Find out how Evan Kice created the throwback pixelated adventure game Afterplace.

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Winners in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.

Flighty

Flighty might be the easiest thing travelers navigate on their entire trip. “Travel can be a high-stress situation,” says Ryan Jones, the Austin-based developer who founded the app in 2019. “We want Flighty to work so well that it feels almost boringly obvious.”

Behind the Design: Flighty

Find out how Ryan Jones created this best-in-class travel app.

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Railbound

In Railbound, players are challenged to link train cars in proper order by laying down track through a mechanic that’s as simple as finger painting. “I pay a lot of attention to input,” says Luke Spierewka of the game’s Afterburn studio. “For Railbound, I wanted a system where you basically paint rail tiles with one finger.”

Behind the Design: Railbound

Learn how the Afterburn game studio created this tricky track puzzler.

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Winners in this category improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.

Headspace

Few apps have made mindfulness as accessible as Headspace. More than a decade since its launch, the app continues to set the standard for mental health apps. “Mindfulness, meditation, mental health — none of these are easy to navigate,” says Jeff Birkeland, senior vice president for member products. “An app that feels warm, friendly, and easy to use can provide approachable support for tough issues.”

Behind the Design: Headspace

Find out how the Headspace team made its app “approachable and friendly.”

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Endling

Endling is a 3D adventure in which you play as a fox navigating a land charred by environmental disaster and human impact. It’s also a powerful mix of medium and message. “It’s a survival game, but a simplified one that focuses more on telling a story,” says Philipp Nägelsbach, game designer and producer at HandyGames.

Behind the Design: Endling

How the HandyGames team created this powerful mix of medium and message.

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Winners in this category feature stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations that lend to a distinctive and cohesive theme.

Any Distance

Luke Beard, the Atlanta-based designer who created Any Distance with engineer Daniel Kuntz, says the app is “for everyone, not just athletes.” Their app is a design-forward fitness tracker and social network that delivers workout stats in beautiful and shareable formats — dynamic charts and graphs, animated 3D maps, AR experiences, and gorgeous cards — that can integrate photos. And its name is also its philosophy: Any distance counts, not just a swim or bike ride, but a walking meeting, stroller run, or its most popular option, a dog walk.

Behind the Design: Any Distance

Learn how Luke Beard and Daniel Kuntz created the design-forward fitness tracker Any Distance.

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Resident Evil Village

The horror adventure comes to Mac with Apple silicon, with all the visual achievements fans of the long-running series could hope for. From its creepy castle to its decrepit factories to its magnificently hideous villains, Resident Evil Village offers some of the most realistic graphics ever seen on Apple devices. “The concept was a horror theme park with unique characters that stand out against a beautiful environment,” says producer Tsuyohi Kanda.

Behind the Design: Resident Evil Village

Learn how the stunningly beautiful horror adventure came to life on Mac.

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Winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre.

SwingVision

When Swupnil Sahai started creating SwingVision, he had no app-building experience — but he’d played a lot of tennis. “The initial idea was, ‘Maybe we can use the accelerometer and gyroscope on Apple Watch to figure out how fast I’m swinging, and maybe we can use the [Apple Watch] screen to keep score,’” says Sahai. “That was really it.” Today, SwingVision has become an integral part of the tennis community.

Behind the Design: SwingVision

Discover how the SwingVision team served up the definitive tennis app.

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MARVEL SNAP

MARVEL SNAP reboots the collectible card game genre with brisk gameplay, a wild cast of superheroes, and its “snap” mechanic, a double-or-nothing bet that adds whole new layers of strategy-slash-psychological warfare. “Our goal as designers is to maximize that ratio of complexity and depth,” says Ben Brode, chief development officer for Second Dinner.

Behind the Design: MARVEL SNAP

Find out how the SNAP team rebooted the entire collectible-card game universe.

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As a kid, Universe founder Joseph Cohen loved nearly everything about the internet: how it brought people together, created avenues for his twin passions of creativity and commerce, and democratized the flow of information. “I grew up in New York,” Cohen says, “but I like to say that I really grew up on the internet.”

Today, Cohen’s passion is still the internet — but he’s no longer just living in it. He’s striving to improve it. “Our goal is making this technology available to everybody,” he says.

Launched in 2017, the powerful, versatile, and almost unbelievably simple Universe makes creating a website as easy as building with blocks. The app operates on a grid system. To create a site, add blocks to the grid, and to edit a site, move those blocks around. No knowledge of coding, design, or publishing is necessary — Universe even handles the process of acquiring and publishing to specific domain names. The app doesn’t just remove barriers, it bulldozes them. And today, Universe currently powers storefronts, artist portfolios, musician pages, community group hubs, personal web presences, and everything in between.

In the past year, Universe empowered more people than ever with a series of accessibility upgrades directly inspired by people’s feedback. In one example, a high-school student in California who is blind reached out to ask for better VoiceOver support — and the Universe team quickly came up with an elegant idea.

“We learned that the grid system we designed is perfectly fitted to screen readers,” he says. “VoiceOver works by reading from the top left of the page, so when you have a grid-based coordinate system, it will walk right through what’s on the screen. It’ll say, ‘OK, in position one and two, you have an image of flowers,’ and so forth.”

The team refined the feature by working closely with a number of people who are blind or have low vision — many of whom have Universe-created sites online right now. And they kept going, adding Dynamic Type to scale text as well as accessibility upgrades to the app’s general navigation, settings, audience metrics, and more.

The team’s latest project aims to make it even easier for anyone to get started with web design. Cohen and team are working on an AI feature that will instantly generate or refine a custom website based on natural language descriptions. Tell Universe, “Make a pink site with sparkles for my custom nail business in Chicago,” and the results will appear in seconds.

Our goal is making this technology available to everybody.

Joseph Cohen, Universe founder

“It’ll be a dialogue; it’s not a one-way street,” says Cohen. “You can still edit your site manually, or you can ask it to change the theme or background color.” (The AI designer is named GUS, both because it stands for “generative Universe sites” and because Universe employs a very skilled designer named Gus. “We have to call him Human Gus now,” laughs Cohen.)

Cohen plans to build the AI feature “in public,” releasing regular video updates about the team’s progress as part of a way to garner people’s feedback on the fly. It’s another example of his drive to make the app — and the internet — more open to everyone. “I still live in New York, and the best part of New York is that it’s incredibly diverse,” he says. “It’s gritty and organic and very human. I think the internet can look like that — but you need great tools to enable it.”

Learn more about Universe

Download Universe – Website Builder from the App Store

Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.

Explore more of the 2023 Behind the Design series

MARVEL SNAP reboots the entire collectible card game universe.

The game is stacked with incredible visuals, a multiverse of gameplay variations, and a “snap” mechanic — a double-or-nothing bet — that’s as simple as it is revolutionary. It’s got an encyclopedic collection of iconic and deep-cut Marvel characters, but players don’t need a background in comic-book lore or collectible card games in order to participate. And with brilliantly intuitive touch controls and speedy gameplay, it’s perfect for mobile devices.

MARVEL SNAP is the brainchild of Ben Brode and Hamilton Chu, the masterminds behind Hearthstone, which itself redefined the collectible card genre upon its 2014 release. In 2018, the duo launched their own studio, Second Dinner, with big aspirations and an even bigger problem: “We didn’t have any ideas,” laughs Brode, the studio’s chief development officer. “It’s a little terrifying to sit down at your new job and think, ‘OK, we have to come up with a game, and we have nothing.’”

To break their creative block, Brode and Chu started playing every board game they could get their hands on. “That’s the soup that SNAP arose from,” Brode explains. It also led them to the early breakthrough — what Brode calls Chu’s genius idea — that would define the game. “He said, ‘You know what would be really fun? Incorporating the doubling cube from backgammon,’” says Brode. “We tried it and immediately realized we were onto something.”

From there, things moved fast. The pair had inked a deal with Marvel, so they sat down to think about what made Marvel special. “It’s the conflict between heroes and villains, right?” he continues. “It’s not about mowing down enemies, it’s about that heroic 1v1 standoff. So we said, ‘That’s it. Let’s try a card game.’” The pair played the earliest rounds of SNAP on the back of business cards and the game’s foundations were established in all of two days.

While the core game was built fast, the iterations took much longer. Over the next four years, Second Dinner played, refined, and simplified — to a degree. “It was honestly less about making the game simple and more about maximizing the depth of the complexity we chose to add,” Brode says.

On one hand, SNAP is an incredibly simple game with one card type, three locations, and six turns. Rules for those card types and locations are easy to follow. Battles last a matter of minutes.

But those basic components combine for a game of near-infinite complexity — and perfectly calibrated balance. “Most people misunderstand randomness by thinking of it as a scale,” Brode says. “That absolutely is not how randomness works. While no two games of SNAP are alike, in every game you have to think: ‘How can I win this time?’ It’s about the intersection between randomness and skill. And if you lose, you always have an opportunity to reflect on how you could have done something differently.”

While no two games of SNAP are alike, in every game you have to think: ‘How can I win this time?’ It’s about the intersection between randomness and skill.

Ben Brode, MARVEL SNAP creator

Even the game’s language keeps players engaged. For instance, retreating in SNAP isn’t necessarily an admission of defeat; it might be a considered decision to minimize loss. “If you decide to leave because it’s strategically correct, that’s not losing!” says Brode. As such, players who retreat get a screen that says “Escaped!” — a much more palatable outcome than losing. “‘Escaped’ zeroes out the emotional negativity,” Brode notes.

As befitting its comic-book origins, SNAP is a visual feast. Characters have their own unique animations, like Ghost Rider using his chain to yank a discarded card back into the match or Devil Dinosaur unleashing a board-rattling roar. Players can even enable a 60 fps setting to make a Hulk smash look truly incredible. Even “snapping” an opponent triggers a dramatic light show and haptic feedback.

While SNAP certainly includes top-line Avengers, they’re by no means the game’s heaviest hitters. Big wins can come courtesy of characters like Blue Marvel, Mister Fantastic, Misty Knight, and Enchantress — names you’ve maybe not heard in a while, if you’ve heard them at all. Brode says showcasing lesser-known characters was part of the strategy to appeal to a wider audience, but also a nod to his own comic-book past. (Naturally, those who worked on the game also have their favorites — art director Jomaro Kindred is a big Black Panther fan, while producer Gareth Ackerman is really into Armor.)

It’s a comic-book game for non-comic-book people, a collectible card battler for those who’ve never heard the phrase, and an incredible achievement that appeals to players of all ages. “I got a suggestion this week from a 5-year-old in Wales who had an idea for a new location,” says Brode. “His parents forwarded it to me with a note that said, ‘We play this together as a family, and he’s learning numbers and math through this game and these characters.’ That’s incredibly rewarding, and it feels awesome.”

Learn more about MARVEL SNAP

Download MARVEL SNAP from the App Store

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