iOS 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.
ā¢ UIScene lifecycle is now mandatory ā apps built without it will fail to launch on iOS 27
ā¢ iPhone apps running via iPhone Mirroring or on iPad are now fully resizable, making adaptive layout a hard requirement rather than a best practice
ā¢ UINavigationItem gains barMinimizationBehavior and barMinimizationSafeAreaAdjustment to control interactive scroll-away behavior
ā¢ UITabBarController gains prominentTabIdentifier and sidebar.preferredPlacement = .sidebar for iPhone
ā¢ iPhone apps are now fully resizable in iPhone Mirroring on Mac and when running on iPad ā apps that rely on UIScreen.main, interface orientation, or user interface idiom for layout will break or look wrong
ā¢ Navigation bars gain interactive minimization via barMinimizationBehavior, giving developers explicit control over scroll-away behavior previously only managed by the system
ā¢ iPhone tab bar controllers can now opt into sidebar layout with sidebar.preferredPlacement = .sidebar, unlocking iPad-style navigation on large iPhone contexts
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 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.