Seb Vidal
@SebJVidal
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iOS Developer 👨🏽💻 Working on Duet, a journal for couples 📖 Maker of Snippet, a code sharing tool for macOS 📸
Manchester, England
Joined June 2012
Dropped a new article over on my blog. This time, exploring how you can fill the gaps in Mac Catalyst by using native AppKit components, right in your iOS codebase, with UIKit's private _UINSView class.
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Apple use real life UIVisualEffectViews in their stores 😌 Looks like UIBlurEffectStyleSystemMaterial to me…
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Spent some time reverse engineering Apple Music and Podcast's search chips UI 👀. Interestingly, there's no public or private API to achieve this, _and_ both Music and Podcasts have different implementations of the identical interface 🫠. Anyone interested in an article on this?
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Visual effects on iOS are actually pretty complicated!. Most visual effects comprise of *at least* 4 compositing filters. Some simple ones like gaussian blur, saturation and brightness. But also some more complex stuff like colour/vibrance matrix multiplication, and luminance.
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Custom view controller transition I built at work this week. A few interesting engineering challenges…. 1) Presenting the half sheet during the custom transition. 2) Animating the frame/transform of an MKMapView!.3) Ensuring continuity of the activity indicator before/after the
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Alright, after much demand, here it is! 😃 The Apple Music/Podcasts UI complete with a custom view controller transition. Sadly, a couple of private APIs are required for variable blur and display corner radius. Built with Swift and UIKit. Link to the GitHub project 👇🏽
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👀
Would anyone be interested in a blog post about reverse engineering the new Photos app UI in iOS 18? 👀.
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Just updated this transition to use the cheeky `UIScreen._displayCornerRadius` API 🤓 Will anyone ever notice this? No. But I will 😌
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I promised you a zinger, so here's your private API of the day. Meet _UIContextMenuAccessoryView and UIContextMenuInteractionDelegate_Private's _contextMenuInteraction(_:accessoriesForMenuWithConfiguration:) method. This enables iMessage-like accessory views to be displayed
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SF Symbols 6 beta has dropped but they seem kinda cranky about this new symbol. 🫣
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Looks like someone at Apple forgot that SwiftUI's ToolbarPlacement.largeNavigationTitleAccessory API is private 💀
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Interesting. looks like Apple has an internal onboarding framework that they use to build these "What's New" screens across many of their apps. 👀. OnBoardingKit (yes, with a capital B) 😄 Worth having a poke around the runtime headers:
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⚠️ Private API of the day:. UIAlertController's _setHeaderContentViewController(_:) method lets you set any UIViewController as a custom header for your alert. Apple use this in the new Journal app's UI to present a date picker in an action sheet, as pointed out in
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@ParkerOrtolani It's giving such CloudKit x Craig Federighi "and it's Free! . (with limits)" vibes 😄
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“Menus have been rewritten to fully use Cocoa, this reduces AppKit’s _Carbon_ footprint. ” 💀
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This is, in my opinion, what the iOS 18 Mail redesign should have looked like. Fully gesture driven, fluid and interruptible animations for the new category view. The category view is also contained inside a navigation bar palette for easier access. Built with Swift and UIKit.
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Been a while, but here's your private API of the day. UIKit's fluid slider, as seen in Apple Music, Podcasts, SpringBoard and more. UISlider has private `_sliderStyle` and `sliderConfiguration` properties. Here, the slider has a style of 110, and the configuration is an
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⚠️ Private API of the day:. UINavigationBar’s _UINavigationBarLargeTitleView subview has an _accessoryView property that acts as a sort of bar button item that aligns with the large title label. This is used in all sorts of system apps like Health, Music, and Podcasts. Enjoy! 🥳
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⚠️ Private API of the day. Cracked the case of Apple's custom share sheet in MobileSlideShow (Photos). UIActivityViewController has a private `setCustomViewController:` method that lets you add a custom view as a header. I combined this with a custom view controller
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For anyone wondering what's going on with this funky-looking UIMenu. it turns out, it's not a UIMenu. The whole modal view is a WKWebView. Not sure what's worse, this Temu UIMenu or the current election results displayed underneath it. 🫠
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⚠️ Private API of the day. and it's a good one 🤓. UICustomViewMenuElement is a class that inherits from UIMenuElement and lets you initialise a menu item with a custom content view. It's used in frameworks like ChatKit for the Messages app. Gist below👇🏽
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Fun detail in light mode… The selected chip doesn’t just change its text colour, there’s actually a second label masked to the chip resulting in this cool transition. Exact behaviour of the Music app. Was an interesting challenge to recreate using UIKit 👍🏽
Spent some time reverse engineering Apple Music and Podcast's search chips UI 👀. Interestingly, there's no public or private API to achieve this, _and_ both Music and Podcasts have different implementations of the identical interface 🫠. Anyone interested in an article on this?
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Watching people use their phones and realising they have no idea -[UIActivityViewController setCustomViewController:] isn’t API and is behind a private entitlement 🥲
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Would anyone be interested in a blog post about reverse engineering the new Photos app UI in iOS 18? 👀.
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⚠️ Private API of the Day: _UINavigationBarPalette. This let's you add a "palette" below a UINavigationBar as per Calendar and Fitness. I'm by no means the first to discover this, but here's a fully Swift implementation, no Obj-C and bridging header. Probably App Store safe with
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Private UIKit API of the day… 👀. UIAlertController has a `_setHeaderContentViewController(_:)` method that lets you assign an instance of UIViewController as the alert’s header. This works across alert styles, platforms, and doesn’t interfere with accessibility! 🥳
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Just found out UITextField/UITextView has a private UIKeyboardType, specifically for picking Emojis 👀. Super easy to use as well, you just need to create an instance of UIKeyboardType with a value of 124 using the `init(rawValue:)` initialiser.
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Looove this animation in Control Centre! 😍 Haven’t noticed this before, anyone know if it’s new in iOS 16?
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Another month, another private UINavigationBar API 🙃. This time (and perhaps implemented by a developer of Scottish descent) UINavigationItem's `_weeTitle` property. Adds that "Thursday, 1 Feb" text above the "Summary" large title.
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Subtle change… I switched to using easing gradients from linear ones here. There no longer appears to be a harsh line where the gradient ends. I had to use a CSS gradient generator and convert it manually to stops/colours of a CAGradientLayer as neither UIKit or SwiftUI support
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One of the coolest additions to UIKit is the new dynamic behaviour of the `.default` UIStatusBarStyle. There’s been an entire class part of the SpringBoard app since iOS 7 that does this for wallpapers - great that it’s been exposed to developers 👍🏼
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I guess when Apple created this video for the SF Symbols page they forgot that "laugh.svg" was a private symbol. 🙃. Shoutout to @zats for finding these 🙏🏽
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Finally implemented the reverse transition of this App Store hero effect in Duet 😅. Always get a few questions about these so, this is built with Swift and UIKit with the UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning protocol and friends. Feedback always appreciated! 🙏🏽
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1 like and I’ll waste my weekend recreating the Apple Music/Podcasts now playing toolbar and hero transition…. 2 likes and I’ll open source it.
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Fun animation for an upcoming app I’m working on 📖👀. Using UIViewPropertyAnimator’s `fractionComplete` API to control what is essentially a `layoutSubviews()` call on the two avatar views.
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Not visionOS content but more fun with custom UIViewController transitions 😎. A lot going on here, from simple alpha animations, to interpolating frames, transforms, shadows and custom blur effects 🙂
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Is this sped-up navigation animation new? You’d think that after laying off ~80% of staff, Twitter wouldn’t have the bandwidth to re-implement the whole native iOS navigation system 🙃
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Almost a month later 🫣 but here it is! Recreating Apple Music’s Search Chips UI. Quite an in-depth article, detailing how we can manipulate view hierarchies that we don’t own. A couple of private APIs in there… App Store safe though!. Enjoy 🤓.
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This got a _lot_ more support than I anticipated, so thank you to everyone who liked, left kind comments, and RT’ed 🙏🏽. You’ve waited long enough, so here it is, a dive into reverse engineering iOS 18’s new Photos app UI! Enjoy ❤️.
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Apple really calling `tableView.reloadData()` every time they want to update the UIProgressView value? Smh. 😤😁
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Love to see this previously private API opened up to 3rd party developers 💪🏼
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Another cheeky UIMenu private API 👀 `setHeaderViewProvider(_:)` lets you supply a custom view as a global header for your menu. It's quite similar to UICustomViewMenuElement, but the difference here is that the item can't be selected. But you _can_ add interactive UI elements.
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This got more interested that I anticipated, so I've put together a demo of how to use Apple's internal OnBoardingKit framework. Goes without saying that, because you have to link against a private framework, this should never go anywhere near production code 😄 GitHub link👇🏽
Interesting. looks like Apple has an internal onboarding framework that they use to build these "What's New" screens across many of their apps. 👀. OnBoardingKit (yes, with a capital B) 😄 Worth having a poke around the runtime headers:
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Updated this custom view controller transition in Duet, inspired by Apple's App Store app. Added some subtle scale, translation and rotation effects to the comment bubbles during the animation. Built with Swift and UIKit 😊
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Does this scare anyone? 20 minute read. I'm not even done yet. Somehow, this is my longest, most complicated article yet. You're in for a banger. or a snooze fest, idk
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Dropped a new article over on my blog 👀. If you’re interested in how Apple creates menu elements with custom views or headers, then this one’s for you!. Explore two private UIMenu APIs….
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TIL that UIScreen has a private `_displayCornerRadius ` property that returns…well…just that! Cool for doing stuff like this:
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Article on custom menu elements using private UIMenu APIs anyone…? 👀
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Finally cracked the curious case of custom UINavigationBar heights. for real this time 😅. Turns out it's as easy as setting the `titleView` to an instance of the (private) `_UINavigationBarTitleView` class. Call the `setHeight:` method, add your subviews and, voila!. This is
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Took some time, but here’s a Tint Colour settings screen for an upcoming app I’m working on 🌈👀. The animation comprises of _actual_ UIKit components, so dark mode, dynamic type, etc. are fully supported. Also, couldn’t resists using the private variableBlur CAFilter! 😁
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Starting my first iOS job in two weeks from today! 🥳🎉. Genuinely couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do 9-5 than writing Swift/SwiftUI code! 😄
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Starting my first job as an iOS Developer tomorrow 🥳🎉 . Mixed emotions, really excited but equally terrified I’ll forget ~3 years of iOS knowledge the moment I step foot in the office 😂.
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Had a couple of folks ask me how to recreate the left-aligned title in the new Journal app's UINavigationBar 🤔. Turns out this can be done with entirely public UIKit APIs. Just set the horizontal `titlePositionAdjustment` property of UINavigationBarAppearance to some extreme
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Quick Swift/UIKit tip. 💡. If you're wrapping a UIKit class, like UIScrollView, in a UIView subclass but still want the public interface of your subclass to include that of a scroll view, @dynamicMemeberLookup is your friend!
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Shoutout to the engineers keeping Twitter for Mac working behind El*n’s back 😅 Kind of a miracle this still works as well as it does…
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Any excuse to create a custom UIViewController transition… 🤷🏽♂️
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So this got a lot more interest than I anticipated… BUT! We have a solution 😱. Big thanks to @zats for doing most of the heavy lifting. Our combined solution allows you to replicate (almost?) exactly the behaviour you see in apps like iMessage. Gist:
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Can we argue about SwiftUI vs UIKit today instead? 🥵. SwiftUI performance bad, UIKit verbose, am I right??.
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Progress update. it works! 🤪. Couple of edge cases to handle to avoid array index out of bounds crashes etc., but all that should be pretty easy compared to syncing the scrubber/page view animations 🥲
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Private API of the day I guess? You can achieve this two line large title in your navigation bar very easily with this extension of UINavigationItem…
I wonder how many private versions of UINavigationBar Apple has… there’s also this multi-line one that I don’t understand how it’s NOT public.
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Aaand here it is! Nice, smooth navigation bar transition 😍 Also animated the position and alpha of the page control. Overall, the effect is subtle, but definitely makes the transition seem more natural. Gearing up to release version 1.2 of Duet and it's an update that I'll be
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Today, in my endless pursuit of doing things I absolutely shouldn’t…. I found out you can import the private ChatKit framework and initialise an instance of CKInvisibleInkImageEffectView using NSClassFromString! 😄
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👨🏽💻 Source Code: couldn't find this documented well anywhere, so put this project up on GitHub demoing how to create collapsible list sections. The project uses Swift and UIKit, with UICollectionView and NSDiffableDataSourceSectionSnapshot APIs. Enjoy!
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This. Whenever people ask why I haven’t made the switch yet, this is the *first* thing that comes to mind. Performance. I don’t care about Metal shaders, scroll view visual effects, or matched geometry if a *simple* List can’t perform like it’s actually running on modern.
My biggest problem with SwiftUI right now is how terribly under-performant it is. Apple’s most powerful iOS device ever, powered by the cutting-edge M4 chip, can’t do this layout animation without horrible choppiness and hangs.
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Bad news for anyone hoping to recreate this UI in the new Mail app. MobileCal is using a similar design and has done away the navigation bar's standard large title, replacing it with a custom _UINavigationBarPalette. Too late for this release cycle, but if you'd like to see
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Another day, another private API. 🥱. This time, adding a placeholder string to a UITextView. Has been possible for a long time with UITextField, but for some reason not (publicly) with the text view counterpart 🤷🏽♂️. No more subclassing UITextView and manually showing/hiding a
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I recreated the new iOS 17 Messages drawer, known internally as the CKSendMenuViewController 🥵. As always, there’s a lot going on here - various transforms, custom transitions, blurs, visual effects, one or two private APIs 🤫😁. Built with Swift and UIKit.
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To celebrate the end of WWDC, here's your cheeky private API of the day. This is LTUITranslationViewController, part of the TranslationUIServices framework. Super easy to set up, just call init, then setText: passing in an attributed string, and voila! All there is to it 😊
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Had a stab at rebuilding the custom sheets in Apple's new Sports app UI with Swift and UIKit ⚽️. Was a little tricky as Sports isn't available on the Xcode simulator, so no inspecting the view hierarchy. That said, it was easier to achieve than I anticipated, GitHub below 👇🏽
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Just launched by first open-source Swift Package, SettingsKit 🥳. SettingsKit lets you build those tedious Settings screens with just a few lines of code, and recreates the look you’ll find in Apple’s own Settings app with pixel-perfect precision! ⚙️.
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Was even simpler than that. Just a single _UICustomViewMenuElement - no palette menu required. If you don't specify a primaryActionHandler, the custom view menu element isn't selected on tap down, so the menu isn't dismissed.
Looks like a _UICustomViewMenuElement using the new (in iOS 17) palette style menu? Gonna have to have a crack at recreating this….
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Quick tip to dramatically improve UITable/CollectionView performance when loading images:. Use UIImage's `prepareThumbnail(of:completionHandler:)` method to decode and resize the image on a background thread. Also, don't do what I did and multiply the target size by the
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Updated my blog last night with authentic iOS visual effects. Almost a 1:1 recreation of UIKit's UIBlurEffect.systemMaterial. Cheated by pre-rendering the effect into an image using AppKit and CoreAnimation as CSS doesn't have an alternative to CAFilter's luminanceCurveMap 🫠
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Thought I’d share this small app I’m working on because I’m super proud of this App Store-like hero animation, complete with bouncy cells on scroll and all. Lots of subtle things going on with this transition, I learnt a _lot_ making this and I’m really happy with the outcome 🤩
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Making a start on this today 🤓 Spent a couple of hours tidying up the code during the week and actually found a much better way of doing it. Stay tuned!
Spent some time reverse engineering Apple Music and Podcast's search chips UI 👀. Interestingly, there's no public or private API to achieve this, _and_ both Music and Podcasts have different implementations of the identical interface 🫠. Anyone interested in an article on this?
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Here's a fun one if you're providing metadata to a UIActivityViewController using the LPLinkMetadata class (which you should be 😉). LPLinkMetadata has a private `summary` property that you can use to provide detail text underneath the `title`. Subtle, but helpful in this
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Something I’ve had to put together for work, and continuing on from my last post, is a Find My style UI with sheets that appear below the tab bar 🗺️. Here’s a proof of concept of my “UITabBarSheetController”. Takes 3 lines of code to setup and works with UIKit view controllers
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This was the only natural evolution of this interaction 😵💫🤤
Took some time, but here’s a Tint Colour settings screen for an upcoming app I’m working on 🌈👀. The animation comprises of _actual_ UIKit components, so dark mode, dynamic type, etc. are fully supported. Also, couldn’t resists using the private variableBlur CAFilter! 😁
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Quick UICollectionView appreciate post. 🥹. Didn't realise how easy it was to create these UICollectionViewListCells with `popUpMenu(_:)` accessories. I've been rolling my own UITableViewCell subclasses with custom UIButton configurations for years 😭
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Working on onboarding for Duet. What do people think? Feels like something is missing to me. Feedback would be appreciated 🫣
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Cheeky extension for converting any UIColor into its disabled counterpart. See "Change Passcode" label. Seems to be used quite often by UIKit for UIBarButtonItems etc. Yes, private API, obfuscate, probably fine. you know the deal 🥱
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Ending the week on a high with a UIKit lab 🥳 I will absolutely be dumping every FB I’ve submitted relating to private navigation bar APIs on these poor engineers 😁
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🚨 SwiftUI hot take 🚨. It’s been about a month since we all saw this slide. And, having had time to think about it, my thoughts are:. I agree, the best way to build an app is with SwiftUI…. But the way to build the *best* app, is still with UIKit or AppKit. 😳
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Idk how long this has been working, but we can finally get a look at how Apple built the iPhone 15's Action Button UI in Settings on iOS 17. Not sure what I was expecting, but it's pretty simple? Just a SCNView rendering the 3D SceneKit content and standard UIKit controls 🤷🏽♂️
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Yesterday was not the day we got variable blur APIs in the iOS SDK… 😁
Today could be the day we get variable blur APIs in the iOS SDK… #WWDC24 👀.
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Custom view controller transitions are great, but you have to account for *everything*. Here, I did not account for everything 😅
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Just published a new article on my blog, exploring how to create custom navigation bar content like Apple's Messages app using UIKit's private _UINavigationBarTitleView API. 🤓.
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How is it 2024 and self-sizing UITable/CollectionViewCells are still the bane of my existence 🙃
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UIKit folks, any guesses what caused this rendering glitch in this UIAlertController. ?. Anyone? Nope? Well, it was setting "Renders with edge antialiasing" to YES in the Info.plist 😄 I lost a _lot_ of time to this 🥲
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