Shadowing Practice: WWDC26: Modernize your UIKit app | Apple - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hi, I'm Michael Ox, an Engineering Manager on the UI Frameworks team.
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Hi, I'm Michael Ox, an Engineering Manager on the UI Frameworks team.
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And today, I'll tell you how to modernize your UIKit app.
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In this video, I'll tell you about some big changes to app adaptivity requirements and how iPhone apps are fully resizable.
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Next, I'll present some new APIs in tab bars, navigation bars and menus.
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Then, I'll talk about how to support Apple intelligence and some changes you should be aware of.
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And finally, I'll cover a new skill that helps an agent to handle most of this modernization work automatically.
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Let's get started with app adaptivity.
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Your app can already appear in many different environments.
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There are different screen sizes and apps can run side by side with other apps and even themselves.
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On iPad, people expect apps to resize and move to external displays seamlessly.
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On iPhone, people expect apps to work in both portrait and landscape orientations.
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They also expect to mirror their iPhone to the Mac.
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In iOS and macOS 27, this experience has been improved, and apps running in these environments are now exposed to many
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of the dynamic changes any app native to the platform needs to support.
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When people use iPhone mirroring on the Mac, they can fully resize the iPhone window, allowing your apps to resize and adapt.
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Likewise, an iPhone-only app running on iPad will be fully resizable like any other iPad app.
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Because of this, it is important that your app dynamically adjusts to any available scene size at runtime.
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If your app is a universal binary, you're off to a great start start, but there's more to do to make your app fully adaptive
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and have it dynamically adjust to the environment it is running in.
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I will cover the most important steps and common issues you might encounter when making your app more adaptive.
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Verifying your app is no longer using App Lifecycle and instead has adopted Scene Lifecycle, the basis for any adaptive app.
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Making sure your app is not using main screen references.
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And how to handle user interface idiom and interface orientation checks.
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The first step is to move from App Lifecycle to Scene Lifecycle.
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Most apps are already using Scene Lifecycle.
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It is the basis for an adaptive app
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and for many of the other tasks I'm going to show you in this video.
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UiScene Lifecycle is now required when building with the latest SDKs.
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Without it, your application will no longer launch.
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Verify that your app is using a UI scene delegate, which is the basis for scene lifecycle.
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If you have not yet migrated to scene lifecycle, check out the video Make your UIKit app more flexible from WWDC25,
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and read Transitioning to the UIKit scene-based lifecycle in the documentation.
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Next, when your iPhone app is mirrored on a Mac, or when a person moves your app to an external display on the iPad,
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iPad, the screen associated with your scene changes. That means
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that any reference to the main screen in your code will provide incorrect information for the environment your app is running in.
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It is important that you do not reference the main screen in your app.
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Instead, access the screen dynamically from a Windows window scene.
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When a view or view controller is not available in immediate context, pass in a screen reference to any method that needs it.
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Even better than fetching the correct screen is to remove screen references altogether.
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There are a lot of other APIs that are better suited for an adaptive app.
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I'll take you through two common patterns.
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Accessing the scale of the screen should be replaced with the trait collection's display scale.
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Views and view controllers automatically update their trait collections and provide reasonable fallbacks even when they're not part of the visible hierarchy.
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A lot of common override points are also tracked, meaning that you do not need to explicitly monitor for changes.
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Instead, the system tracks which trade collection properties are being used inside common layout and drawing methods, like layout subviews, update properties,
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draw rect, and many others.
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If a change to a tracked trade is detected, the system will ensure these methods are called again, so your UI automatically updates accordingly.
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Check out Automatic Trade Tracking in the documentation to learn more.
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In places where Automatic Trade Tracking is not available, Register for Trade Changes can be used to observe changes.
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This method allows you to set up a closure that is called when a specific trade in the receiving view changes.
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Use this to invalidate caches or update other data related to that view.
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Check out Adapting Your App When Traits Change in the documentation to learn more.
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Another common use of the screen is to check its bounce to get the amount of space available to your app.
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However, in an adaptive environment, the space your scene has available is not always the full screen.
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So if you still have any reference to screen bounds in your app, now is the time to remove these.
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The Window Scene's Effective Geometry provides information on how much space your app has available.
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If you need to monitor the Effective Geometry for changes, implement Window Scene Did Update Effective Geometry in your Scene Delegate.
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In your Views and View Controllers, instead of referencing the scene bounds, use the available size of your view controller's view
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or your view super view to determine how much space is available to it.
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This makes your UI less dependent on how it is presented.
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It will adjust better when your view controller appears in other contexts, for example inside of a split view controller.
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For games, resizing can be challenging.
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Due to this, UI Requires Fullscreen is honored on iPhone in resizable environments starting in iOS 27.
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Its behavior has also been updated and no longer opts your app fully out of resizing.
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Instead, it enables discrete resizing that honors your supported interface orientations.
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In discrete resizing, every time a person changes the scene size, the system transitions the scene to a new screen configuration matching that size.
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So your game always renders at full quality in the available space.
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If your app is using the user interface idiom trait, be aware that this trait is no longer meaningful for any kind of layout decision.
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Your app is expected to use the additional space in a meaningful way, regardless of whether it is running in the phone or pad user interface idiom.
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When your iPhone app is running on an iPad or an iPhone mirroring on the Mac, it will be fully resizable, but it will still run under the phone user interface idiom.
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Stop checking the user interface idiom for any layout decisions in your code.
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Use size classes instead to handle sizing constraints such as collapsing menus and updating your app's layout for the available space.
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If you need finer control, use the surrounding view size like I mentioned earlier.
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Interface orientation also is no longer useful for layout decisions.
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In iOS 27, an app-supported interface orientation is a preference provided to the system to the system.
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It will be ignored when your app is running in a resizable environment.
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You should not consider interface orientation for any layout calculations.
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In iPhone mirroring on the Mac, your app will always be running in the portrait interface orientation regardless of the aspect ratio of your app's scene.
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Any interface orientation checks in your app should also be updated to use size classes.
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This conceptual shift was introduced in iOS 8.
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At WWDC 2014, Bruce Nilo said, a device rotation is only an animated bounce change.
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With an array of device sizes, resizable windows on iPad, and resizable iPhone apps on Mac, today this insight is more relevant than ever.
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And speaking of interface orientation, in iOS 27, UI View also conforms to the new body protocols from Core Motion and Core Location.
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This makes it much easier to configure your motion and location managers.
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Connect them to the view that visualizes the motion data, such as a compass or a map view.
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This ensures the data is always in the right coordinate space, regardless of interface orientation.
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That covers the main adaptivity changes.
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Now, here's how to test these changes in your app.
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Xcode 27 brings new ways to iterate your app's behavior across
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different screen sizes without having to install your app on multiple separate simulators or devices.
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In the new DeviceHub app, as well as in Xcode Previews, click the Enter Resize Mode icon.
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Then, drag the edges of the device to resize it freely.
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This allows you to iterate on your changes quicker.
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Once you are satisfied with the results, make sure to test iPhone mirroring and iPad with real devices.
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To learn more about the DeviceHub app and its tools, watch Get the Most Out of DeviceHub. And that's adaptivity.
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Before I show you a new agentic coding skill
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that can help you with the work necessary to make your app fully adaptive, there are two more topics to cover.
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First up, bars and menus.
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On iPad, tab bars can expand into a full sidebar representation to surface more sections of the app hierarchy
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when the current environment supports a sidebar.
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On iPhone, the bottom tab bar is shown across all sizes by default.
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New in iOS 27, iPhone apps can also opt into sidebars by setting the tabbar controller's Sidebar Preferred Placement to Sidebar.
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Note that in contrast to the iPad, this is an app choice.
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If your app opts into the sidebar representation, there is no way to toggle between a sidebar and tabbar layout in the UI.
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Instead, the system determines if there is enough space to show a sidebar.
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For example, when the horizontal size class is regular.
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To determine if the tab bar sidebar representation can be shown, use the sidebars is available property.
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If a sidebar is not currently available, surface the UI behind nested tabs in other parts of your app.
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To learn more about managing tab groups, watch Make Your UIKit app more flexible from WWDC 25.
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And to learn more about tabbars and its integration with sidebars, watch Elevate Your tab and sidebar experience in iPadOS from WWDC24.
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UITabbarController also lets you customize the prominent tab.
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The prominent tab is always visible, even when the tabbar collapses during scrolling.
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In iOS 27, you have the option to make any tab prominent by setting the prominent tab identifier.
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Okay, that's tabbars.
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Now let's talk about navigation bars.
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Navigation bars can interactively slide away as people scroll.
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This provides more room on the screen for your app's content.
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By default, navigation bars minimize in certain conditions defined by the system.
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You can force this behavior one way
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or the other by setting the Bar Minimization Behavior property on your navigation item to Always or Never.
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If you handle Safe Area Avoidance yourself, set Bar Minimization Safe Area Adjustment to Never,
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so Bar Minimization doesn't update insets automatically.
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Another change during scroll interactions is an updated appearance for the scroll edge effects.
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As such, you should review your design, especially where you have previously overwritten the defaults provided by the OS.
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In particular, the automatic style no longer switches between the existing soft and hard styles, but provides its own visuals for additional clarity.
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If you have overwritten the style from automatic previously, that decision should be re-evaluated especially when set to soft,
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as that no longer matches the default system appearance.
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With the refined look of liquid glass, images you set on menu elements may not be shown by default in some contexts,
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such as in the menu bars on iPadOS and macOS.
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If you still need an image to be visible, set the preferred image visibility property to override the default system behavior.
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Review the updated human interface guidelines for when to include visible images in a menu element.
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And that's Bars and Menus.
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Now, how to support Apple intelligence in your app.
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Menus in iOS 27 feature an Ask Siri button to allow people to start a conversation with Siri right from your app.
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This is a powerful entry point that allows people to interact with the context they care about.
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Menus will automatically display this item when there's content relevant for Siri.
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To provide more relevant information specific to your app, use the new View Annotations API.
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With it, you can annotate specific views with app entities.
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Check out Explore Advanced App Intents features for Siri and Apple Intelligence to learn more.
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If your app supports drag and drop, Siri can load resources from your application's drag handlers.
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When Apple Intelligence is invoked from context menus, the system will call available drag delegate methods to load the content.
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Avoid performing animations or presenting modal UI from session will begin.
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Drag sessions can be initiated without a user gesture.
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If your app has a stateful UI that shows up when a user initiates a drag, put that code in sessionDidMove instead.
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If the adaptivity changes I outlined sound like a lot of work, I've got you covered.
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Let's talk about what's on everyone's mind, agentic coding.
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New in Xcode 27 is an app modernization skill.
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It has a deep understanding of the adaptivity tasks I outlined.
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And with the context of your project, it can make a lot of these changes automatically.
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Use Xcode's intelligence features and ask an agent to make your app more adaptable.
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It will automatically convert main screen calls to trait collection or scene bounce checks, adding invalidation logic if necessary.
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It will also replace interface orientation checks with size class checks.
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It will even convert your app to use scene lifecycle.
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For more complex tasks, it will ask clarifying questions.
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And for tasks too large to handle in a single session, it will add comments to help you keep track of the remaining work.
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And to use skills in other tools, you can export the ones Xcode uses with XCRun Agent Skills Export.
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This will create markdown files that you can then import in your workflows.
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Skills like this one are a powerful way to prepare your app for resizable environments. And that's it.
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These are the most important things to modernize your app.
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Build your app with the iOS 27 SDK
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and try out the resizable simulator in the new DeviceHub app and test your app in iPhone mirroring on macOS 27.
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Identify areas in your app that need to be a little more flexible.
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And if you like agentic coding, give the new skill a try and discover how much it can do automatically.
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Thanks for joining.
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I cannot wait to resize your apps.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will enhance your English listening and speaking skills by practicing with a transcript from a recent technology presentation. As you engage with the content, you will focus on key concepts related to modernizing applications using a framework known as UIKit. This exercise is an excellent opportunity for you to learn English with YouTube, as you will not only improve your language skills but also gain insights into the field of app development. By shadowing the speaker, you will practice pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm—all essential components of effective communication.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- app adaptivity - the ability of applications to adjust to various screen sizes and orientations.
- Scene Lifecycle - a framework that allows applications to manage their UI based on different screen contexts.
- trait collection - a set of properties that define the environment in which an app is running.
- dynamic changes - alterations that occur in response to different conditions, such as screen size or orientation changes.
- main screen references - specific references in code that indicate a primary screen, which can lead to incorrect information if not dynamic.
- automatic trade tracking - a feature that allows apps to update their UI based on changes in the traits of the environment.
- closure - a block of code that can capture and store state from its surrounding context.
Practice Tips
To get the most out of this lesson, consider using a shadowing app to help you practice. Start by listening to a short segment of the video, then pause and repeat what you hear, mimicking the speaker's tone and speed. Focus on the way the speaker emphasizes important phrases like “app adaptivity” or “Scene Lifecycle.” The key to effective shadow speech is timing; aim to replicate the rhythm of the original speaker within a few seconds. If the speaker's pace feels too fast initially, feel free to slow down the playback speed until you’re comfortable. With each repetition, challenge yourself to speak more fluidly and confidently. Engaging in this way will not only reinforce your vocabulary but also improve your overall fluency.
For continuous improvement, keep track of your progress and record your speaking sessions. Reflect on areas where you excel, as well as those requiring further practice. Exploring varied content, like the provided YouTube video, can help you become more adept at understanding context and technical language, thus enhancing your ability to produce effective shadow speech.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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