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Apple supercharges its tools and technologies for developers to foster creativity, innovation, and design

1. Apple enhances developer tools with on-device intelligence and modern designs. 2. Xcode 26 includes large language model integration for developers' productivity. 3. Foundation Models framework empowers developers to create intelligent and privacy-focused apps. 4. New design material, Liquid Glass, improves user interface aesthetics and experience. 5. Safety tools for kids and accessibility features advance Apple's commitment to user experience.

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FAQ

Why Bullish?

Strong focus on developer tools and user experience can drive app adoption and ecosystem growth, similar to previous successful updates leading to increased hardware sales.

How important is it?

The announcement reflects Apple's commitment to enhancing its ecosystem, which can increase developer engagement and drive future revenue.

Why Long Term?

Continued investment in developer support will enhance Apple's App Store ecosystem, generating sustained revenue through app sales and services over time.

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Access to the on-device Apple Intelligence model, large language model integration in Xcode, and an elegant new software design across Apple platforms give developers everything they need to build beautiful modern apps with speed and confidence CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apple® today announced new technologies and enhancements to its developer tools to help developers create more beautiful, intelligent, and engaging app experiences across Apple platforms. A beautiful new software design brings more focus to content, and delivers more expressive and delightful experiences across iOS 26, iPadOS® 26, macOS® Tahoe 26, watchOS® 26, and tvOS® 26,1 while keeping them all instantly familiar. The Foundation Models framework joins a suite of tools that allow developers to tap into on-device intelligence, and Xcode® 26 leverages large language models like ChatGPT, giving them access to Xcode’s Coding Tools and other intelligent features. These new resources join the extensive and continuously evolving set of technologies Apple offers developers, including over 250,000 APIs that enable developers to integrate their apps with Apple’s hardware and software features. These APIs span a wide range of capabilities, such as machine learning, augmented reality, health and fitness, spatial computing, and high-performance graphics. With each platform release, Apple expands and refines its technologies and tools to assist developers in bringing their ideas to life and delivering rich, responsive, and optimized experiences across Apple platforms. “Developers play a vital role in shaping the experiences customers love across Apple platforms,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “With access to the on-device Apple Intelligence foundation model and new intelligence features in Xcode 26, we’re empowering developers to build richer, more intuitive apps for users everywhere.” New Design with Liquid Glass The elegant new design gives developers the opportunity to make their apps more expressive and delightful, while being instantly familiar. It’s crafted with a new software-based material called Liquid Glass, which combines the optical qualities of glass with a sense of fluidity. This gorgeous new material extends from the smallest elements users interact with every day — like buttons, switches, sliders, text, and media controls — to larger elements, including tab bars and sidebars for navigating apps. Native frameworks like SwiftUI® give developers everything they need to adopt the new design in their apps. The universal design allows developers to bring greater focus to their users’ content, establishing a consistent experience when developing across Apple’s platforms. With the all-new Icon Composer app, developers and designers are empowered to create visually captivating app icons that enhance their app’s identity. This powerful tool helps create a consistent visual identity for app icons by annotating layers for multiple rendering modes, with advanced features that include blurring, adjusting translucency, testing specular highlights, and previewing icons in various tints. Foundation Models Framework With the Foundation Models framework, developers will be able to build on Apple Intelligence™ to bring users new experiences that are intelligent, available when they’re offline, and that protect their privacy, using AI inference that is free of cost. The framework has native support for Swift®, so developers can easily access the Apple Intelligence model with as few as three lines of code. Guided generation, tool calling, and more are all built into the framework, making it easier than ever to implement generative capabilities right into an existing app. For example, Automattic is using the framework in its Day One journaling app to bring users privacy-centric intelligence features. “The Foundation Model framework has helped us rethink what’s possible with journaling,” said Paul Mayne, head of Day One at Automattic. “Now we can bring intelligence and privacy together in ways that deeply respect our users.” Xcode 26 Xcode 26 is packed with intelligence features and experiences to help developers make their ideas a reality. Developers can connect large language models directly into their coding experience to write code, tests, and documentation; iterate on a design; fix errors; and more. Xcode has built-in support for ChatGPT, and developers can use API keys from other providers, or run local models on their Mac® with Apple silicon, to choose the model that best suits their needs. Developers can start using ChatGPT in Xcode without needing to create an account, and subscribers can connect their accounts to access more requests.2 Coding Tools help developers stay in the flow and be more productive in their tasks. Accessible from anywhere in a developer’s code, Coding Tools provide suggested actions like generating a preview or a playground, or fixing an issue, and can also handle specific prompts for other tasks right inline. Xcode 26 comes with additional features to keep developers focused and productive, like a redesigned navigation experience, improvements to the localization catalog, and improved support for Voice Control to dictate Swift code and navigate the Xcode interface entirely by voice. App Intents App Intents lets developers deeply integrate their app’s actions and content with system experiences across platforms, including Siri®, Spotlight®, widgets, controls, and more. This year, App Intents gains support for visual intelligence. This enables apps to provide visual search results within the visual intelligence experience, allowing users to go directly into the app from those results. For instance, Etsy is leveraging visual intelligence to enhance the user experience in its iOS app by facilitating faster and more intuitive discovery of goods and products. “At Etsy, our job is to seamlessly connect shoppers with creative entrepreneurs around the world who offer extraordinary items — many of which are hard to describe. The ability to meet shoppers right on their iPhone with visual intelligence is a meaningful unlock, and makes it easier than ever for buyers to quickly discover exactly what they’re looking for while directly supporting small businesses,” said Etsy CTO Rafe Colburn. Swift 6.2 Swift 6.2 introduces powerful features to enhance performance, concurrency, and interoperability with other languages like C++, Java, and JavaScript. And now, in collaboration with the open-source community, Swift 6.2 gains support for WebAssembly. Building upon Swift 6’s strict concurrency checking, Swift 6.2 simplifies writing single-threaded code. Developers can now configure modules or individual files to run on the main actor by default, eliminating the need for additional annotations. Containerization Framework The Containerization framework enables developers to create, download, or run Linux container images directly on Mac. It’s built on an open-source framework optimized for Apple silicon and provides secure isolation between container images. Tools and Resources for Games Game Porting Toolkit 3 provides developers with updated tools for evaluating and profiling their game. Developers can now customize the Metal® Performance HUD, and get onscreen insights and guidance for optimizing graphics code for the best possible performance in the evaluation environment. And developers can use Mac Remote Developer Tools for Windows to build Mac games on a remote Mac in their existing development workflows. Metal 4 is designed exclusively for Apple silicon, and sets the stage for the next generation of games on Apple platforms with support for advanced graphics and machine learning technologies. Developers can now run inference networks directly in their shaders to compute lighting, materials, and geometry, enabling highly realistic visual effects for their games. MetalFX Frame Interpolation generates an intermediate frame for every two input frames to achieve higher and more stable frame rates, and MetalFX Denoising makes real-time ray tracing and path tracing possible in the most advanced games. The Apple Games™ app gives players a new all-in-one destination for all of their games and the friends they play them with on iPhone®, iPad®, and Mac. It also introduces a new dedicated app for developers to reengage their existing players and attract new ones. Challenges give players a new way to compete with friends in score-based showdowns, turning single-player games into shared experiences. Developers that have Game Center leaderboards for their games can easily add challenges, offering players even more ways to rally a group, crown a winner, and have a rematch. Game Overlay enhances in-game engagement by integrating Game Center features directly into gameplay. Players can access their next achievement and recent scores, and see which friends are currently playing, making it easy to start a chat — all without leaving the game. Players can also adjust settings and view the latest In-App Events, keeping them connected and in control without breaking immersion. Managed Background Assets simplifies asset hosting for developers, giving them control over how their app or game downloads assets. Developers can self-host or opt for Apple-Hosted Background Assets, where Apple handles hosting. Every Apple Developer Program membership includes 200GB of Apple hosting capacity for the App Store®. Apple-Hosted Background Assets can be submitted separately from an app build. Tools to Help Protect Kids Online To ensure kids have enjoyable, enriching, and appropriate in-app experiences, developers can utilize a range of tools — including parental controls and the Sensitive Content Analysis framework — to enhance child safety and ensure privacy. Building on these existing tools, developers can use the new Declared Age Range API to deliver age-appropriate content based on a user’s age range. When developers implement this API, parents can allow their children to share their age range without disclosing a birthdate or other sensitive information, enabling developers to tailor experiences accordingly. The feature is built around privacy: Age range data is shared only if parents choose to allow it, and they can disable sharing at any time. New App Store Accessibility and App Store Connect Features New Accessibility Nutrition Labels for App Store product pages help users learn which accessibility features are supported before they download an app or game. Developers can now share information in App Store Connect about their app or game’s support, such as whether it includes VoiceOver, Voice Control, Larger Text, Captions, and more. An Accessibility Nutrition Label will appear on their app’s product page, specific to each platform it supports. Developers can also add a URL on their app’s App Store product page that links users to a website with more details. The App Store Connect app on iOS and iPadOS has been updated to let developers view TestFlight® screenshots and crash feedback, in addition to receiving push notifications when beta testers provide feedback. The App Store Connect API supports these enhancements, and introduces the ability for developers to create webhooks to get real-time updates, and support for Apple-Hosted Background Assets and Game Center configuration. Availability Today’s updates join the ever-expanding collection of intelligent and powerful tools and technologies Apple provides to developers. The Apple Intelligence features detailed require supported devices, which include all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad mini® (A17 Pro), and iPad and Mac models with M1 and later that have Apple Intelligence enabled and Siri and device language set to the same supported language: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, or Chinese (simplified). More languages will be coming by the end of this year: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (traditional), and Vietnamese. For more information, visit apple.com/apple-intelligence. Features are subject to change. Some features may not be available in all languages or regions, and availability may vary due to local laws and regulations. For more information about availability, visit apple.com. All of these features are available for testing starting today through the Apple Developer Program at developer.apple.com, and a public beta will be available through the Apple Beta Software Program next month at beta.apple.com. Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it. Footnotes 1 Available on Apple TV® 4K (2nd generation and later). 2 ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply. For more information, see openai.com/policies/usage-policies. NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple Newsroom (www.apple.com/newsroom), or email Apple’s Media Helpline at media.help@apple.com. © 2025 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Xcode, SwiftUI, Apple Intelligence, Swift, Mac, Siri, Spotlight, Metal, Apple Games, iPhone, iPad, App Store, TestFlight, iPad mini, and Apple TV are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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