The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #17
Discover the iOS 26 public beta date, dive into custom WebView navigation and Liquid Glass animations in SwiftUI, and get practical Icon Composer tips for flawless app icons.
🆕 What’s New
Here's When to Expect the iOS 26 Public Beta
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple’s public betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 and more should go live around Wednesday, July 23 🎉
📚 Must Read
Handling WebView navigation in SwiftUI
Learn how to implement custom WebView navigation in SwiftUI by adding progress indicators, disabling default gestures, and link previews. Discover how to build back and forward history menus in your toolbar and enforce domain restrictions with a navigation decider. This concise guide will help you master WebKit integration and elevate your SwiftUI web browsing experience.
Morphing glass effect elements into one another with glassEffectID
This article shows how to use the glassEffectID modifier in SwiftUI to morph multiple Liquid Glass elements into a single animated shape within a GlassEffectContainer using a shared animation namespace. It explains how to assign unique IDs, toggle visibility with state and animations, and create smooth transitions between grouped and individual shapes. Follow this guide to add dynamic glass effect animations to your app’s UI.
Glassifying custom SwiftUI views
Learn to apply the Liquid Glass design to any SwiftUI view with a single modifier that adapts its appearance based on what’s behind it. Explore built-in styles like regular, clear, and identity, then tweak them with tint or interactive settings and swap the default shape for your own. You’ll see how just one line of code can turn ordinary UI elements into dynamic, glass-like components.
Working with Generable and Guide in Foundation Models
Learn how to use the new Generable and Guide macros in iOS 26’s Foundation Models framework to turn free-form model output into fully typed Swift structs without manual parsing. Follow a step-by-step tutorial to build a vocabulary quiz app that generates on-device questions and automatically maps them into a Question object with precise field controls.
🛠️ Toolbox
Icon Composer: Tackling Challenges
Struggling with hidden SVG elements and monochrome icons? This article covers stripping out unwanted rectangles, choosing between SVG and PNG, crafting dynamic monochrome gradients, and consolidating layers to fit within Composer’s limit. It also explains where to place .icon files in Xcode and how to test their behavior on different system versions.
🍬 One More Thing…
Presenting Liquid Glass sheets in SwiftUI on iOS 26
Learn how iOS 26’s Liquid Glass sheets float with rounded, non-touching edges and automatically adopt new medium and large detents without custom backgrounds. Then dive into morphing transitions, from toolbar button to sheet and back, using matchedTransitionSource and navigationTransition for a seamless, connected presentation.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
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November
👋 That’s it for this week
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Until next Friday — keep shipping 🍏