macOS 27 introduces NSTextSelectionManager for custom text selection in any view, while reinforcing best practices for gesture recognizers, keyboard navigation, and NSWindowRestoration to make AppKit apps feel native and resilient.
ā¢ NSTextSelectionManager introduced in macOS 27 as a new API bringing gesture-recognizer-backed text selection to arbitrary views
ā¢ NSStatusItem expanded interface session lifecycle API clarified and promoted for custom popup windows
ā¢ preventsApplicationTerminationWhenModal guidance updated to encourage setting false for non-data-critical sheets
ā¢ Control events (NSControlEvents) confirmed available back to 10.11 and now officially recommended over mouseDown overrides
ā¢ NSTextSelectionManager is a new macOS 27 API that brings full bidirectional text selection, drag-and-drop, and toggle behaviors to any custom view without subclassing NSTextView
ā¢ Proper NSWindowRestoration ensures apps quit gracefully during system reboots and relaunch exactly where users left off, a growing expectation on modern macOS
ā¢ Adopting gesture recognizers and control events instead of mouseDown overrides enables cross-framework compatibility with SwiftUI and Mac Catalyst components
Liquid Glass is Apple's new material and visual design language introduced in iOS 27, bringing translucent, refractive glass-like surfaces to system and custom UI elements. It replaces the frosted vibrancy aesthetic with a more dynamic, depth-aware material that responds to content beneath it.
iOS 27 introduces new SwiftUI drag and drop APIs including reorderable, reorderContainer, dragContainer, and configuration modifiers that enable reordering within and across collections, multi-item drag, and fine-grained control over how data is transferred during drag and drop operations.
PaperKit is Apple's full-featured canvas framework ā previously internal-only ā now publicly available in iOS/macOS/visionOS 27. It powers the drawing and markup experience in Notes, Preview, and Freeform, giving developers access to a complete pencil, shapes, images, and text canvas with a rich data model.
In-depth guide
SwiftUI & Liquid Glass in iOS 27 āiOS 27 enforces stricter adaptivity requirements for UIKit apps, making iPhone apps fully resizable in iPhone Mirroring and on iPad, while introducing new navigation bar minimization controls, sidebar opt-in for iPhone tab bars, and prominent tab customization.