iOS 27 brings significant updates to Live Activities and the Dynamic Island, including new expanded presentations, richer interactivity via App Intents directly from the island, and updated layout APIs for more expressive minimal and compact views.
ā¢ Compact and minimal Dynamic Island views now accept SwiftUI interactive controls (Button, Toggle) backed by App Intents ā previously these views were display-only
ā¢ New `DynamicIslandExpandedRegion(.bottom)` zone added alongside the existing leading/trailing/center regions
ā¢ `ActivityConfiguration` gains a `pushToStartToken` callback enabling Live Activities to be initiated remotely via APNs without prior app launch
ā¢ `ContentState` updates now support animated transitions using the new `.activityTransition` modifier for smoother data changes
ā¢ Compact and minimal Dynamic Island views now support interactive controls (buttons, toggles) powered by App Intents, letting users take action without opening the app
ā¢ New expanded presentation regions give developers more layout flexibility with dedicated leading, trailing, center, and bottom zones that adapt across device sizes
ā¢ Live Activities can now be started remotely via push notification updates even when the app has never been launched, broadening real-time use cases like delivery tracking and sports scores
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.