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Enhance bug reports with debug profiles and logging

When you file bug reports through Apple’s Feedback Assistant, you’re helping flag issues, improve our platforms, and make the experience better for developers and customers alike.

You can supply more information about bugs you come across when you provide a sysdiagnose from your device. Sysdiagnoses contain logs that include additional information gathered from apps and frameworks that you can submit as part of your bug report. They can be a crucial part of the bug-solving process, especially for troubleshooting certain problems.

That said, a sysdiagnose can contain a lot of information, and you can help the engineers triaging your issue by providing some additional context. That’s where Apple’s Profiles and Logs page comes in: It provides supplemental instructions when reporting an issue with specific frameworks. If you think you know which framework is causing the problem, read its bug reporting and logging instructions: You may be able to provide additional information that can help make your report more actionable — like detailing the song that was playing and the date and time you saw the bug.

Visit the Profiles and Logs section of the Apple Developer website to find out more about filing supplemental information for a bug.

Sometimes, a sysdiagnose is not enough, even with supplemental instruction. For those issues, debug profiles help capture specific details within a technology or framework that can aid engineers in diagnosing the problem. To install a debug profile, download it to your device and follow the instructions to capture the requested information.

So, the next time you go to file a new piece of feedback, please add a sysdiagnose or logging generated from a debug profile to your report. It can help engineers begin tracking down even the trickiest of bugs, and it increases the likelihood of your issue being fixed. As always, the sooner you submit a new problem — and the more information you provide — the higher likelihood you have of getting it resolved in a future software version.

This is especially crucial when filing bugs against beta software, as prioritizations around fixes have to be made in early seeds. If you file a detailed bug with logs and a clear reproduction path, you have a much better chance of it being prioritized than a bug with no additional information.


Resources

File effective bug reports

Profiles and Logs

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How to file great bug reports

Bugs are an inevitable part of the development process. Though they can be frustrating to bump up against, you can help squash these sorts of problems quickly by identifying the issue you’re running into, reproducing it, and filing a bug report. At Apple, we provide an app and website called Feedback Assistant for logging issues with Apple’s products or software.

You should always file feedback for any bugs you find while developing on Apple’s platforms; after all, we can’t fix problems that we don’t know about. But how can you be sure that the information you provide is helpful for triaging the issue, rather than a bug-solving dead end? Here are some of our top tips for making sure your bug report is clear, actionable, and — most importantly — fixable.

Step by step

Whenever you log a new bug report, be clear and descriptive. Whether you’re providing specific feedback around a bug you’re running into or general feedback, describe your issue in detail.

This starts with a clear title that describes both the issue and the inciting factor. “Calendar events are missing” tells the screener that there’s an issue with Calendar events, but not how or why. In contrast, “Calendar events on macOS 10.15.4 are missing after creating a quick event” provides more detail at a glance and potentially helps identify duplicate bugs sooner.


Tip: It’s often helpful for bug screeners to understand how issues are affecting app development. If you identify a problem while developing your app, include the name and version of your app in both the title and description field — even if you can reproduce the problem in a sample project — and add a link to your App Store record or a TestFlight build.


When writing up your problem, describe each step thoroughly — it’s often helpful to pretend that whoever reads it has never seen the app or system you’re writing about before. For example, if you were to write “When I create an event in Calendar, it disappears in a moment,” the screener lacks enough detail to reproduce the issue. Are you creating a Calendar event through the Quick Event button, or are you dragging to add a new event? How long is a moment? Did the event disappear after multitasking, or did you remain in the app?

Whenever a bug screener has to pause and consider this kind of question, it reduces the likelihood that your problem can get fixed quickly. Instead, think about ways you can describe your bug in detail, like so:

1. Click Quick Event button in the Calendar app.
2. Fill out an event with any title.
3. Hit Return.

Actual Results: The event appears in the right place in my calendar but then disappears.

Expected Results: The Calendar event should appear and stay on my calendar.

After filling out your reproduction steps and expected result, it’s also worth considering additional factors that could influence the problem. Are you signed into iCloud? Do you have any Accessibility settings turned on? Does the issue reproduce in a similar fashion in other places around the OS? The more questions you can answer in the initial report, the faster someone reading it can triage it effectively and get it over to the right team or person for a fix.

Add some visuals

If you can reproduce the bug and capture video or a screenshot while it’s happening, this information can be invaluable to people for troubleshooting the issue. A screen recording can also help capture details that you may not have thought to provide in the description field. If your problem involves an issue with the UI, you should always include visuals.

Log the crash

Unfortunately, not all bugs are reproducible or have easy-to-follow steps. For trickier cases, consider providing logging information like a sysdiagnose: If you’re filing a bug on your iPhone or iPad, you can use the Feedback Assistant app to capture one automatically. If filing a bug via Apple’s web portal, you can install profiles that can help you manually gather a sysdiagnose.

You can also provide any additional logging relevant to the issue. For example, if you’re experiencing a crash, you can include your app’s crash logs. If you’re reporting a performance regression, you can include an Instruments Trace on iOS or iPadOS, or a Sample on macOS.

Enhance bug reports with debug profiles and logging

Create a sample project

Running into an issue while developing an app? Consider isolating the problem into a small sample project that compiles. Not only can it help you narrow down the specific bug you’re facing, but it’s one of the easiest ways for Apple’s bug screeners and engineers to triage the offending problem. If you can’t produce a sample project, sample code is also helpful — any additional information that can help narrow down the issue is valuable.

Escalate your report

If you’re a paid member of the Apple Developer Program, Enterprise Program, or MFi Program and you’re having a technical issue with one of Apple’s platforms on a production release, you should consider filing a Technical Support Incident. This is a request for code-level support for Apple frameworks, APIs, and tools when you cannot fix a bug, have trouble implementing a specific technology, or have other questions about your code.

Request technical support

Resources

Learn more about Feedback Assistant

Learn more about our privacy policy when filing bugs with Feedback Assistant

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New Resources Available for Password Manager Apps

Apple has created a new open source project to help developers of password managers collaborate to create strong passwords that are compatible with popular websites. The Password Manager Resources open source project allows you to integrate website-specific requirements used by the iCloud Keychain password manager to generate strong, unique passwords. The project also contains collections of websites known to share a sign-in system, links to websites’ pages where users change passwords, and more.

View Password Manager Resources

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Meet the developer: Christopher Gray

How Christopher Gray’s app, Scholly, helps kids go to college.

As a teenager in Alabama, Christopher Gray was a straight-A student, community volunteer, and relentless dreamer. He was also the son of a single mother who’d lost her job to the recession. At times during his high school years, they were homeless.

With graduation looming, Gray came to see college as a necessity, but one priced like a luxury item. Lacking internet access at home, he searched for scholarships at the library, one hour at a time, in keeping with the posted screen limits. He often wrote 500-word application essays on his phone — not a smartphone but a chunky 2008 model with a tiny keyboard. He did this for seven months.

“I saw a problem and I tried to fix it,” he says from a Hollywood office populated by a handful of coworkers and one very large dog named Milk. “My grandma always told me, ‘You have to work. You have to ignore whatever is going on around you, put your head down, and focus.’”

When his first scholarship check arrived, he sensed his efforts paying off. By the time the last one came in, Gray had amassed $1.3 million.

He used the money to study finance and entrepreneurship at Drexel University (and to cover his living expenses for all four years). But the process nagged at him. How, he thought, could it be so disjointed? How many students had it discouraged from going or even applying to college?

“I realized there’s all this money looking for students,” he says, “and all these students looking for money.”

Enter Scholly. Founded at Drexel by Gray and fellow students Nick Pirollo and Bryson Alef, it launched in 2015 with the simple goal of matching students with available scholarships: Input your age, interests, and other demographic information and Scholly would find potential fits.

No matter what your interests are, Scholly can help find money to support them.

The idea, Gray says, was born from his desire to help others do what he did. “I got some scholarships because I was the only one who applied. A lot of times, students just don’t know they exist.”

More good news was to come. His story soon reached the producers of Shark Tank, and the rest is Scholly history: Gray’s 60-second pitch resulted in a near-instant deal with Lori Greiner and Daymond John—and some viral offscreen dramatics. (Greiner offered Gray his requested $40,000 without even asking questions. “I don’t care how we monetize,” she said, prompting a minor meltdown in which a number of sharks basically stormed out of the studio.)

I realized there’s all this money looking for students, and all these students looking for money.

Scholly Search is the classic example of a simple idea that exploded. Today, it has roughly 3 million users who have landed more than $110 million in scholarships.

Actor and activist Jesse Williams is a member of Scholly Search’s board; Chance the Rapper has appeared at its Chicago-based initiatives. The company has relocated from Philadelphia to California, into a sprawling corner office with mountain views.

“The amounts are compelling,” Gray says, “but what’s just as powerful are the stories of people who get, like, the last $3,000 they need to enroll. I always wear my Scholly sweatshirt when I travel, and people come up to me and say, ‘Oh wow, you’re Scholly!’ Not ‘Oh, you’re Chris’ but ‘You’re Scholly!’ And they’ll tell me their story. It’s really powerful to experience that, because, OK, I was a homeless kid.”

Still in his midtwenties, Gray has been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list for social entrepreneurship and Oprah Winfrey’s “SuperSoul 100” (who are basically her favorite people). He’s spoken at the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper summit and received the 2018 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award.

Christopher Gray’s work got the attention of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Jesse Williams.

In recent years, Gray has set about evolving Scholly into a full-service education app. Scholly Math is an AI-powered standalone app that helps students solve tricky problems (while showing its work, of course). There’s also Scholly Editor, a web-based proofreader. “We originally created it to help with essays,” Gray says, “but a lot of kids are using it to get better grades and learn English, especially in underserved schools.” 

Mostly, he hopes to continue helping students reach dreams that circumstances might have once deemed impossible. 

“This good thing happened to me,” he says, “and now maybe I can help people who otherwise may not be able to help themselves.”


Originally published on the App Store.

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Meet the developer: Shine

The secret of their self-care app’s success? Staying authentic.

Before creating Shine, a self-care app that encourages you to “accept who you are today,” co-CEOs Marah Lidey and Naomi Hirabayashi set a few ground rules.

“We’re not going to assume you’re working,” says Lidey. “We’re not going to assume you have or don’t have kids or that you want kids. We’re not going to assume anything about your gender.”

Anything that felt “preachy, pricey, or presumptuous” was off the table too.

That foundation worked. More than 4 million users have signed up for Shine, with nearly one in three reviews describing the app as “life-changing,” according to Hirabayashi.

Shine co-CEO Marah Lidey

How do Lidey and Hirabayashi know their audience so well? They’re part of it — and have been for a long time.

The duo met in 2011 while executives at DoSomething.org, a nonprofit that helps young people transform their communities. The two started getting coffee, then lunch, then after-work drinks, creating what Lidey calls a “safe space to process the tough stuff.” 

Over time, they came to see the “tough stuff” in a new light. “What we were going through wasn’t weird — it was human,” says Lidey.

Shine grew out of their desire to make that safe space bigger, to help others with issues ranging from building a credit score to dealing with giving feedback to employees.

Check in with Shine via its chat interface and the app will serve up articles based on your responses (front). Check out the app’s Quick Hitters for talks tailored to different times of day.

The app launched in 2018 as an “accessible but aspirational” text-based coaching program. Its tone is chatty and friendly, like “the friend that has a psych degree,” says Hirabayashi. (Shine’s actual psych cred comes from therapist and corporate coach Anna Rowley, who helped develop the curriculum.) Using a chat-based interface, the app helps you see how you see yourself. (Hirabayashi, for her part, is a “Caring Critic” prone to “extending compassion outward, but often struggling to bring that compassion home,” she says.)

Shine co-CEO Naomi Hirabayashi

Today the app is rich with features. The Daily Shine is a podcast that Hirabayashi describes as a “secular sermon.” Challenges are short, multiday audio courses on specific goals like “Be More Direct” and “Let Yourself Have More Fun.” “Nightcap” is a collection of sleep stories that double as winking retellings of 2000s rom-coms (“The Devil Wears Pajamas”). “They’re meant to be boring and also a little cheeky,” Lidey says.

Through all the growth, the pair’s goal has remained the same. The idea isn’t to solve every problem, but to adjust how people approach them, says Hirabayashi. “What’s beautiful is that the pressure is to be authentic, not perfect.”


Originally published on the App Store.

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Meet the developer: Andre Haddad

Once a refugee, Haddad now runs the high-end car-rental app Turo.

Thirty years ago, Turo CEO Andre Haddad was in a parking garage beneath his family’s apartment building in Beirut, listening for the bombs.

It was 1989, the last of the 15-year Lebanese civil war, and the two dozen families living in Haddad’s eight-story building often spent their nights huddled in the relative safety of the underground garage. Although just big enough for six cars at most, it had become a shelter, strewn with mattresses and lamps and personal items brought down from the apartments above.

“You build up kind of a war wisdom over time: You don’t want to be on the top floors of your building,” Haddad says. “And a lot of the shooting would happen at night, so you’d try to sleep in the garage, hearing the shelling and building shaking.”

His family lived like this for more than a year, until the night the shells found their apartment.

Haddad is recounting his story in downtown San Francisco at the offices of his car-sharing app Turo, which that lets people rent out their (often very fancy) cars by the day. Want to drive a Lamborghini? Or take a BMW convertible from Vegas to the Bay Area? All doable. Today, Turo has more than 14 million members and 450,000 registered vehicles. Haddad’s road to get here crossed many borders, but it started that night in the garage.

*Turo* makes it possible to rent the kind of cars that you’d normally associate with spy movies.

After the bomb hit, things moved fast. Haddad’s family decided to to leave Lebanon and stay with relatives in Cyprus, but Haddad took a different path. Prior to the blast he’d been chatting with a cousin in Paris, one who’d asked him a question he’d never considered. “He said, ‘It’s your senior year of high school, what are your plans? What do you want to do?’” Haddad said. “I thought, wow, nobody’s asked me those questions. When you’re in those conditions, there’s not much of a vision for the future. It’s a mechanism of self-defense.”

The day after the shell landed on his balcony, Haddad called that cousin, and before long he had a ticket to Paris and a plan to get into business school. Seventeen years old and on his own, Haddad also found his way into the French music scene and became a DJ — he claims to have seen Daft Punk before the helmets — but there was a problem: His music had all been obliterated in the blast.

Haddad, a former DJ in Paris, keeps a well-stocked music collection.

“I was looking for ways to rebuild my collection,” he says, “and I discovered eBay.”

The selection was incredible, but the more he bought, the more he wanted to sell — and the shipping charges were piling up fast. To address both problems —and using his speedily developing business instincts — he founded iBazar, which launched as a way to swap music and became one of Europe’s largest online marketplaces. iBazar grew large enough that it was eventually purchased by eBay for more than $100 million. Just like that, everything had changed.

Haddad spent the next decade in tech jobs, occupying positions with eBay and serving as CEO of Shopping.com. In 2011, ground down by the workload, he was planning on taking a sabbatical when a friend approached him about a car-sharing idea called Turo. “I got to really appreciate the creativity, the scrappiness, the hunger,” he says. Plus, he was well familiar with the notion of using the internet to connect real people. “Turo was built on trust, which made me feel very comfortable with it,” he says.

It’s an incredible highlight to see the power of humanity.

Andre Haddad

Today, Turo has more than 14 million members. “There are users who are barely 18, and some in their 80s,” he says. The app offers everything from standard sedans to exotic high-end imports, often for less than the price of a traditional rental.

In addition, after some initial hesitation, Haddad has become more vocal about immigration issues. “At first, I didn’t want any public involvement with this kind of noble cause to be misinterpreted as personal publicity — or even worse, corporate publicity,” he says. Plus, he adds, it hadn’t been easy to turn the page.

Today, he’s becoming more and more outspoken, both out loud and in writing. He’s spent years on the board of Immigration Equality, an organization designed to bring equality to LGBTQ+ immigrants. And he’s signed amicus briefs and open letters aimed at protecting immigrants. “It’s the right thing to do,” he says. “It helps the economic development of the United States. But the fact is, people are here because they chose to come here. It’s a very, very hard thing to do. If you’re willing to do that, it means there’s some exceptional traits of character.”

Originally published on the App Store.

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Meet the creative: Chelsa Lauderdale

When writer Chelsa Lauderdale was creating characters for “The Elementalists,” an interactive story in the game Choices, she wanted one in particular to have it all: great looks, enviable talent, a heart of gold.

In other words, everything you’d want in a potential love interest who also happens to be a wizard.

Lauderdale imbued him with real depth. As a student at a university for the magically gifted, Griffin Langley may be able to cast spells, but as a black man he struggles with expectations of his race and gender.

The more time you spend with Griffin, the more he opens up to you.

This is all part of her writing process with Choices. “One of the first things we asked ourselves was: What communities are we underserving?” Lauderdale says. “What can we do to make sure people see themselves in this?“

When she started the job, she was unsure how far to push the stories, which present players with different narrative options and let them choose how everything unfolds.

She had recently decided to cut her hair short and grow out what she calls her “baby Afro” after a conflicted relationship with straighteners and dyes. “I remember asking if it was OK to include a story line about how a character learned to love her natural hair,” she says.

There used to be this idea that black men shouldn’t show weakness. That can be a tremendous weight.

The team embraced the idea. “Since then I’ve tried to insert little pieces of my experience,” she says.

To Chelsa, Griffin brings many people’s real-world experiences to virtual life—and offers an alternative to how black men are usually portrayed in games. 

“There used to be this idea that black men should be hard, they shouldn’t show weakness. That can be a tremendous weight on people’s mental health and on their relationships.”

Lauderdale started her career early. “I got a writing assignment in the fourth grade and haven’t really stopped since then,” she says.

Griffin is the first character to greet you when you arrive at the magical university, and he warmly takes you under his wing. Over the course of your courtship, he gradually reveals his struggles, and together you tackle identity issues head-on.

“He’s torn between his tough appearance and sweet personality, his parents’ wants and his own,” she says. “I think this is a common feeling within the black community.”

Stories can perpetuate stereotypes or they can change narratives.

Chelsa is writing more Choices stories about identity — as well as young-adult fiction that explores female friendship and community.

“Stories can perpetuate stereotypes or they can change narratives,” she says. “That’s really up to the people who write them.”


Originally published on the App Store.

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Meet the developer: Kaya Thomas

Kaya Thomas’ We Read Too spotlights writers and characters of color.

Kaya Thomas has always been a voracious reader, yet growing up she rarely came across protagonists who looked like her. “High school was when I started to realize that none of the characters were ever black girls,” Thomas says.

This inspired her to code We Read Too, an app that helps you find children’s books by writers of color, featuring characters of color.

We Read Too has become one of the most comprehensive catalogs of children’s books by writers of color, featuring characters of color.

Thomas, a Dartmouth graduate, now lives in Oakland and works as an iOS engineer at Calm. She still remembers creating a new document on her computer and writing the list that would eventually become We Read Too. 

“The app looks much different today than it did in 2014,” she laughs. In its current version, you can browse by category (picture, chapter, middle grades, young adult) and search by title or author. There are currently over 900 books cataloged in the app.

High school was when I started to realize that none of the characters were ever black girls.

As it stands, We Read Too is a labor of love. Anyone can download it for free, and Thomas is dedicated to keeping it that way. “I wanted We Read Too to be accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they could afford to buy a $1 app,” she says. “I have no intention of ever charging anyone for access to the information.”

Although Thomas hasn’t earned any money from the app, it has paid off in other ways.

“We Read Too helped me build my network and connections, and gain the courage to move out to California and get into the tech industry.”

Kaya Thomas is an iOS engineer at Calm.

When asked how she’d like to see We Read Too expand, Thomas says it’s all about community: “First and foremost, I want to make sure that there are as many titles in the app as possible.” And she hopes to partner with libraries to integrate with their cataloging systems, since this is where many kids and teens get their books. 

Thomas also has a few words of advice for coders of all backgrounds. 

“Don’t let anyone discourage you. You have to realize that you are 100 percent capable of learning the skills,” she says. “There’s no one person who is supposed to be a coder. You are completely capable, and don’t let anyone say you’re not because of who you are.”

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Meet the Developer: David Niemeijer

In 1995, Giesbert Nijhuis was touring through Europe with his ska-reggae band when his van tumbled off the road. The accident left Nijhuis paralyzed from the neck down. He was 26 years old.

“I couldn’t move anything except for my head, and only had an eighth of my normal breathing capacity. There was almost no hope of healing or repairing the spinal cord,” says Nijhuis, a professional graphic designer and photographer. “At first I was questioning if I wanted to continue life like this.”

David Niemeijer, a friend of Nijhuis’ since childhood, remembers that dark time well. “His new physical challenges drained the life right out of him.”

Giesbert Nijhuis (top) inspired his friend David Niemeijer to create AssistiveWare.

The accident affected every part of Nijhuis’ life, including his very livelihood. To edit images on his Mac, he needed to be able to enter key combinations, but the assistive onscreen keyboards available then didn’t allow for that. In his new situation—or his “second life,” as he likes to call it—he was facing serious accessibility issues.

So Niemeijer, who has a degree in agricultural and environmental sciences and was working at a university at the time, created his own assistive keyboard—what would become the Mac app Keystrokes. He soon scaled back his work at the university to focus on founding a software company, AssistiveWare, which released a number of pioneering accessibility tools for the desktop.

And then came the launch of iOS, which changed everything for Niemeijer by untethering assistive software from the computer. In 2009, just a year after the iOS Software Development Kit launched, AssistiveWare released its breakthrough product: Proloquo2Go.

*Proloquo2Go* is a symbol-based keyboard to aid people with difficulties in speaking.

Proloquo2Go gives a voice to those who have difficulty speaking (proloquo is Latin for “to speak out loud”). Paired with an iPhone or iPad, it also made this assistive technology more widely available. “It enables people to start learning to use it much earlier. It used to be that you’d get an expensive machine when you were 7 or 8 years old,” says Niemeijer.

“With an iPad or iPod touch, you can start around 2 or 3 years old, which makes a huge difference, because some kids then can go to regular schools and are not reliant on special education.”

Proloquo2Go presents a variety of simple drawings; tap them to create sentences that the app will read aloud. Instead of providing only a limited number of predetermined sentences and phrases, Proloquo2Go lets you combine words in infinite ways.

“It offers users total communication,” says Niemeijer. “It allows people to not just use utilitarian language, such as asking or answering questions, but also to share stories or emotional anecdotes. It allows them to tell a joke.”

AssistiveWare currently has a half dozen apps available across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Pictello lets users create storybooks using text-to-speech and the photos on their iOS device. Keeble is a highly customizable keyboard app that supports users with motor challenges, low vision, and dyslexia. And News-2-You publishes a weekly newspaper, written with both text and symbols, for beginning readers.

Nijhuis is proud of what Niemeijer has managed to build. “I love having seen David’s works grow from the software he made just for me to the company it is today, serving so many people all over the world.”

The designer continues to influence AssistiveWare’s evolution: He created the company logo and the app icon for Proloquo2Go.


Originally published on the App Store.

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How to design an accessible Apple Watch app

Apple Watch is built with accessibility in mind, empowering everyone to use their device in the way that suits them best — and your Apple Watch app can take advantage of all these features to create a seamless and inclusive experience.

When you’re designing your Apple Watch app, here are a few considerations to take into account to make it accessible to everyone.

Responsive, responsible reviews

One of the best ways to get a picture of the work you need to do is to explore Apple Watch’s accessibility and display options: These allow people to adjust or augment their interface and interactions with Apple Watch.

You can access accessibility and text settings on Apple Watch or through the Watch app on iPhone.

When designing your app, Dynamic Type and VoiceOver are two core settings worth exploring: Dynamic Type allows people to change the size of their text on Apple Watch, while VoiceOver helps people navigate without having to view the screen. You can enable or adjust either in the Settings app or on your iPhone’s Watch app at any time. 
We recommend testing your Watch app with these options enabled to make sure your app is fully accessible. You may also want to consider testing your interface with Bold Text, Reduce Transparency, and Reduce Motion.

For each test you run, ask yourself a few questions: How does your interface change? Are there aspects of your design that are no longer being well-represented? Take detailed notes and screenshots — these can help you go back and address potential issues in both your designs and your app’s Xcode project.

Scale up, scale down

Compared with other Apple products, the small size of an Apple Watch display means far less space for presenting text. As such, it can be tempting to consider specifying fixed smaller font sizes so that more text can be shown on screen at once.

Despite this, it’s important to use legible font sizes and support Dynamic Type. Displaying more text on screen, while helpful in principle, won’t help anyone if it’s too small to read. Instead, let text scale naturally, and use Apple Watch’s swipe gestures or rotate the Digital Crown to read longer text.

In watchOS 5, four large type sizes were added to the built-in styles on Apple Watch. Each column in this table is manifested as a type size option, which people can set on Apple Watch in **Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size**.

The quickest way to support Dynamic Type and text scaling is to use built-in text styles, which set type using Apple Watch’s system font: SF Compact. This font is specifically designed for optimal legibility at small sizes, offering nine built-in styles in a range of sizes and weights to help make text in your app as readable as possible.

As a general rule, all text in your app should scale appropriately when people adjust their text size. Fixed text sizes should be used only for information that is clearly legible at its default setting. For example, the Podcasts app uses built-in text styles to display the podcast title at a consistently large size, and enables its smaller text elements to scale.

When text is set to the smallest size, the Podcasts app displays two full episode rows on a 44mm Apple Watch. At the largest size, there are fewer rows displayed but the episode title, date and duration are much larger.

If you plan to use a custom font within your app, you’ll need to take a few additional steps to ensure that it works with Dynamic Type, including adding the font to your project and configuring text styles.

Learn more about adding custom fonts >

Learn more about scaling fonts using Dynamic Type >

Support VoiceOver with accessibility labels

VoiceOver is a gesture-based screen reader that tells you exactly what’s happening on your Apple Watch, and helps you navigate it without the need to see the screen. You can add support for VoiceOver in your app with accessibility labels, which help people using the feature understand how your interface is constructed.


Fun fact: If you want to quickly test VoiceOver in your app, you can use Siri. Just enable Siri and ask it to “Turn on VoiceOver.”


When someone looks at your interface on Apple Watch, your app can rely on common visual paradigms like button shapes and lists to communicate information and actions. For VoiceOver, think about how you might translate that experience to someone hearing the interface of your app: Start by designating a clear reading order of your interface elements, and make sure that you label your interface elements with brief and clear descriptions.

There’s one more step to consider when implementing VoiceOver: Your audience may want to hear your interface in another language. VoiceOver supports more than 35 languages, and you can make sure your app is ready for use in all of them by localizing your text strings so that all accessibility labels and hints are read in the appropriate language.

Learn more about crafting a great VoiceOver experience in your app >

Learn more about adding accessibility labels to your app >

Learn more about localizing your text strings >

Watch and learn

Apple Watch is our most personal device, and it’s important to provide flexibility for people to experience their apps in the way that best suits them. For everything you create, it’s worth taking the time to test your app and make any adjustments. Whether you’re adding scalable text or incorporating a better VoiceOver experience, these changes have a big impact on people who need or want accessibility features on Apple Watch, and they’ll likely also help you craft better overall designs for everyone who enjoys your app.

Resources

Learn more about designing with accessibility in mind >

Watch “How to write great accessibility labels” >

Learn more about designing type for your apps >

Download SF Compact >

Download design templates for Apple Watch >

Learn more about supporting VoiceOver in your app >

How to use VoiceOver on Apple Watch >