visionOS supports fully photo-realistic, spatially-aware 360Ā° immersive environments with true depth, parallax, spatial audio, and motion ā going far beyond static panoramas. Developers can now surface these environments on both native visionOS apps and the spatial web.
ā¢ visionOS 3 extends immersive environments to the spatial web, allowing web pages to trigger full immersion via new WebXR/spatial APIs
ā¢ New design guidance codifies the 81Ā° primary FOV, the 1-meter camera height standard, and the 40 px/degree sharpness target
ā¢ Motion and spatial audio attachment to individual mesh layers is now a first-class workflow in RealityKit, replacing manual anchor hacks
ā¢ System environments (Haleakala, Moon, Jupiter, etc.) demonstrate a layered-mesh parallax model that third-party environments can now replicate with documented APIs
ā¢ True parallax and depth separation (not just a skybox) means users perceive genuine 3D space, raising the bar for presence and immersion in your app
ā¢ Environments can be tailored per app purpose ā media viewing, productivity, creative tools ā with controllable lighting, audio anchors, and animated scene elements
ā¢ Spatial web support means a web-based experience can launch a full immersive environment without requiring a native app install
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 brings a sweeping set of SwiftUI enhancements including Liquid Glass design adoption, new toolbar visibility and overflow APIs, document architecture improvements with Observable, and resizable iPhone app support ā all designed to modernize app UIs with minimal code changes.
Xcode 27 introduces a fully customizable toolbar and theme system, untitled scratch projects, coding agent integration directly in the editor, and the new Device Hub for evaluating apps across simulators and physical devices side-by-side.
In-depth guide
RealityKit & USDKit in iOS 27 āPaperKit 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.