iOS 27 adds soft shadow rendering to RealityKit spotlights and point lights via a configurable lightSize and quality, plus a SurroundingsLightComponent that lets virtual lights illuminate real-world surfaces using the scene understanding mesh.
ā¢ Soft shadows dramatically increase realism by producing physically accurate penumbras based on light area size ā controllable with a single property change
ā¢ Physical space lighting (SurroundingsLightComponent) enables virtual lights like spotlights to paint projective textures and illumination onto real-world walls, floors, and objects
ā¢ Projective textures on spotlights allow cinematic effects like light shining through a stained-glass window or animated caustics, all with minimal code
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
RealityKit & USDKit 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.