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When maintaining iOS apps professionally, this time of year always keeps me on edge. That's because breaking changes that can affect the behavior of existing apps sometimes sneak into the beta release notes published alongside WWDC.
On June 9, 2026 (Japan time), Xcode 27 Beta and iOS & iPadOS 27 Beta were released alongside WWDC2026. This year is no exception, and the release contains several changes that, if left unaddressed, could cause apps to fail to launch or display incorrectly.
This article summarizes the changes that iOS developers should be aware of, based on official documentation. I'll also be checking my predictions article about breaking changes that I wrote back in March of this year.
Release Overview
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Bundled Language | Swift 6.4 |
| Supported SDKs | iOS 27 / iPadOS 27 / tvOS 27 / macOS 27 / visionOS 27 |
| System Requirements | macOS Tahoe 26.4 or later |
| Architecture | Apple silicon only (Intel Mac not supported) |
Long rumored, Intel Macs have finally been dropped from the list of supported platforms.
Checking My Predictions Against What Actually Changed
Back in March, I wrote an article titled "Things to Prepare Now for Breaking Changes in iOS 27 / Xcode 27." There were several changes announced at WWDC25 as "deprecated in the next major update," and I encouraged early adoption.
Was "the next major update" at the time referring to iOS 27 / Xcode 27? Let me go through the results as a way of checking my predictions.
UIKit Scene-Based Lifecycle Is Now Required
This is a breaking change with a significant impact on existing apps. Apps built with the iOS 27 SDK will fail to launch if they don't use the scene-based lifecycle (UIScene).
The UIKit > Deprecations section of the iOS & iPadOS 27 Beta Release Notes contains the following:
Apps built with the latest SDK must adopt the scene-based life cycle or they fail to launch.
It clearly states "fail to launch." This turned out exactly as predicted. Details on the migration will be covered later.
Liquid Glass Made Mandatory (UIDesignRequiresCompatibility Ignored)
The official documentation for UIDesignRequiresCompatibility states the following:
The system ignores this key when you build for iOS 27 or later, iPadOS 27 or later, Mac Catalyst 27 or later, macOS 27 or later, or tvOS 27 or later.
This key is completely ignored in apps built with the iOS 27 SDK. In other words, even if you set it to YES, you can no longer avoid Liquid Glass — exactly as predicted at WWDC25 when it was announced as "removed in the next major release."
iOS 27 also adds a transparency slider for Liquid Glass (allowing users to adjust the intensity of the glass effect in steps), following a "improve while making it mandatory" approach. For developers, the key point is that there's no longer an escape route.
❌ End of Support for iPhone 11 (A13)
It was confirmed that iPhone 11 support will continue. Despite the enhanced AI features, Apple has indicated a policy of prioritizing compatibility with existing devices, and iOS 27 supports the same devices as iOS 26 (iPhone 11 and later). No cuts this year.
Overall, the result was: "The changes officially announced by Apple (UIScene, Liquid Glass) were almost entirely accurate, while the rumor-level prediction about device cuts was wrong."
Headline Features
Full Requirement for UIScene Lifecycle
This is the biggest topic this time around. As of iOS 26, apps could still run with just UIApplicationDelegate, but when built with the iOS 27 SDK, an assertion fires at launch and the app crashes. The migration guide is TN3187.
Apps that haven't yet added UIApplicationSceneManifest or migrated to SceneDelegate should check on this early. Note that this only affects apps built against the target SDK, so apps still built with the iOS 26 SDK won't be affected. However, you'll need to be ready by the time the App Store enforces the SDK requirement (based on past patterns, expected around April 2027).
For specific things to watch out for during migration, see "Things to Prepare Now for Breaking Changes in iOS 27 / Xcode 27."
TrustInsights Framework (New)
A new security-related framework called TrustInsights has been added. Here's a rough translation of the official description:
Evaluate whether a transaction might involve coercive activity, while protecting privacy.
In short, this is a mechanism that lets the system evaluate whether a user is being forced to perform an action through fraud or coercion. The intended users are apps like banking, payments, and cryptocurrency wallets — the expected use case being to trigger additional authentication when a transaction is flagged as high risk.
It appears the evaluation is done by the system, and raw signals are not passed to the app. Real-world use case reports are anticipated.
Other Features (Brief Mentions)
AsyncImage: HTTP Cache Support
AsyncImage now respects standard HTTP cache headers. It also supports specifying URLRequest cachePolicy and configuring a custom URLSession via View.asyncImageURLSession(_:). A small but welcome improvement.
TextKit: NSTextTable Now Available in UIKit
NSTextTable and its related types are now available to UIKit clients starting with iOS 27.
SwiftUI: New Document API
The ReadableDocument / WritableDocument protocols have been added. They support asynchronous reading and writing, progress reporting (Subprogress), and direct URL access. For new apps, the new API is recommended over ReferenceFileDocument.
TabView Selection Behavior Change (Breaking)
In apps built with the iOS 27 SDK, setting selection to a hidden or disabled tab may cause a crash. Apps that dynamically add or remove tabs, or use conditional visibility, will likely need to revisit their selection logic.
In apps built with the iOS 27.0 and iPadOS 27.0 SDKs, a TabView enforces that its selection is set to a visible tab. TabView might crash when its selection is set to a hidden or otherwise unavailable tab. (164516837)
Other Changes (Quick Summary)
Xcode Side
- Interface Builder now has
toolchainmode enabled by default, which compiles without requiring a simulator. This speeds up CI environments swift test --repeat-until failcan now be used to repeatedly run flaky tests until failure- Swift Concurrency visualization in Instruments has been significantly enhanced (new Swift Executors instrument added, Task Collection track added)
- The first LLDB
pocommand in projects using bridging headers is now significantly faster - The ld64 linker has been removed, and the
-ld_classicoption has been deprecated - On Demand Resources has been deprecated. Migrate to Background Assets
iOS / SDK Side
- Foundation Models now supports image input (Attachment) and Private Cloud Compute (server models), and the
LanguageModelprotocol allows third-party cloud models to be handled through a unified API - A new framework called Core AI has been added for running custom models on-device. It is also integrated with the Foundation Models API
- TLS 1.2 minimum requirement is now enforced for MDM, profile distribution, software updates, etc. Check your managed environments
MXMetricManager/MXMetricManagerSubscriberare deprecated, requiring migration to the AsyncStream-basedMetricManager.terminationCategoryhas been added toCrashDiagnostic, andMemoryExceptionDiagnostic(for terminations due to memory limit exceeded) has also been added- A
reorderableAPI has been added that enables drag-to-reorder in views other thanList(such asLazyVStackandLazyVGrid). Also newly supported on watchOS 27.0 - New sample types for menopausal status and postmenopausal bleeding have been added to HealthKit
- Metal 4.1 is now supported
New Frameworks
- Now Playing: A unified playback interface for the lock screen, Control Center, and CarPlay
MusicUnderstanding: A new framework for analyzing music beat, tempo, key, instrument activity, and moreTrustInsights: Helps detect social engineering threats (for security-focused apps)CrashReportExtension: Enables implementation of custom crash reports running out-of-processEvaluations: A new framework for evaluating and verifying the behavior of AI features
Points of Interest
Privacy Implications of TrustInsights
As mentioned earlier, this is a compelling feature for banking and payment apps, but what signals the system collects to perform risk assessment is unclear as of beta 1. It's also worth knowing whether a Privacy Manifest entry is required and whether an Entitlement application is needed. I'll be following along as more information emerges with subsequent betas.
Multimodal Support in Foundation Models
Until now, Foundation Models only returned text in response to text input, which meant significant functional limitations compared to cloud LLMs. The addition of the Attachment API, which allows images to be used as input sources, is personally the most exciting development, as it seems to dramatically expand what's possible in apps.
Detailed documentation titled "Analyzing Images with Multimodal Prompting" has also been provided. I'd like to dive deeper into this once the beta stabilizes.
That said, as of beta 1, a large number of Known Issues have been reported, and how much can actually be used in practice remains to be seen. I'll be watching closely to see how stability improves as betas progress.
Impact of Xcode 27 Becoming Apple Silicon Only
Xcode 27 does not run on Intel Macs. This was announced in advance, but the impact on CI/CD environments is a concern. You'll need to verify the update support status of build stacks for services like Bitrise and Xcode Cloud.
Bitrise in particular may still have Intel-based stacks remaining, so upgrading the stack to Xcode 27 goes hand-in-hand with migrating to Apple Silicon-only machines — but in general, you should be fine using a dedicated stack like osx-xcode-27.0.x (as of June 11, 2026, only osx-xcode-27.0.x-edge is available).
Potential Crashes in Swift Charts
When the deployment target is below iOS 27.0, there is reportedly a possibility of runtime crashes from if conditions inside Chart closures. This can be worked around by extracting the content into a function using @ChartContentBuilder. Easy to overlook, so worth keeping in mind.
Summary
From the perspective of a developer maintaining iOS apps professionally, the biggest breaking changes this time are the full requirement for the UIScene lifecycle and the disabling of UIDesignRequiresCompatibility. Apps that haven't addressed these will fail to launch or display incorrectly when built with the iOS 27 SDK.
As for how the predictions played out: "The changes officially announced by Apple were implemented almost exactly as announced, while rumor-level predictions fell short."
On the feature side, I'm personally most interested in TrustInsights, the new security framework. It's a compelling feature for banking and payment apps, and I'd like to write a follow-up article once the API details are available.
As the beta progresses from 2 through 4, more information will continue to emerge, so I'll keep following along.
Reference Links
- Xcode 27 Release Notes
- iOS & iPadOS 27 Beta Release Notes
- What's New - WWDC2026
- TN3187: Migrating to the UIKit scene-based life cycle
- Predicting Breaking Changes in iOS 27 / Xcode 27 (Author's Prediction Article)
Job Listings: Classmethod is Hiring iOS Engineers
The Starbucks Digital Technology department is looking for engineers with iOS app development experience. We'd love to hear from people who want to work with us, sharing and discussing new Xcode and iOS features together in channels like misc-ios!
We're also hiring iOS/Android engineers in other areas. Let's talk about mobile app development together!