Get Familiar with Your New Development Tools - WWDC25

WWDC25 introduced another set of significant updates to Apple’s developer ecosystem. Xcode 26, Swift 6.2, and SwiftUI all gained major improvements, while WebKit finally arrives as a native SwiftUI component. Here’s what’s new and why it matters.

What’s New in Xcode 26

Xcode 26 focuses on speed, size, and smarter tooling. The IDE is about 24% smaller to download, with Intel simulator runtimes no longer bundled by default, and the Metal toolchain installed only when needed. Large projects also open up to 40% faster, cutting down time wasted on reloads.

Tabs now behave like Safari with pinning and start page options, while search has been redesigned to handle multiple words in any order, even across multiple lines, with results ranked by relevance. Voice Control has a new “Swift mode,” which recognizes operators and camelCase, allowing you to navigate and edit entirely by voice.

AI assistance is now built into the workflow. You can connect to ChatGPT, other providers, or even local models to explain code, generate fixes, or suggest refactors. Prompts can reference code symbols with “@,” attach files or images, and selectively include project context. The assistant proposes changes inline, ready for you to accept or refine.

Debugging is also deeper. Concurrency debugging reveals async execution across threads, with task IDs, TaskGroup properties, and actors clearly visible. A new Processor Trace instrument (on M4 Macs and iPhone 16) logs every branch and call. CPU Counters offer presets including “CPU Bottlenecks,” and a new Power Profiler correlates CPU, GPU, networking, and display use with thermal and charging states.

Testing has become more powerful with UI test recording, including failing test replays with videos and element snapshots, as well as the new XCTHitchMetric for measuring UI stutters. Organizer now provides launch and hang diagnostics, benchmarks your app’s startup against similar apps, and gives you measurable performance goals.

What’s New in Swift

Swift 6.2 is all about safety, performance, and reach. The headline feature is default actor isolation, which implicitly applies @MainActor to module-level types. This reduces repetitive annotations while protecting against common concurrency errors.

Performance improves with InlineArray, which stores fixed-size arrays directly on the stack instead of the heap, and with the new Span type, which replaces unsafe buffer pointers with a safer, structured abstraction. Memory safety checks are stricter, compiler diagnostics are clearer, and error messages provide more context.

Interoperability continues to expand. Swift-Java interoperability is now available alongside improved C++ integration, making Swift more viable in mixed-language environments. On the systems front, Swift adds better containerization support, FreeBSD compatibility, and further progress toward WebAssembly targets.

Concurrency becomes more approachable with expanded attributes and built-in checking. Potential data races are hence caught earlier. Combined with performance and platform updates, Swift 6.2 positions the language as both a safer systems tool and a faster app language.

What’s New in SwiftUI

SwiftUI advances visually and functionally, embracing Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language. Standard components such as NavigationSplitView, TabView, sheets, and sidebars adapt more naturally across devices. On iPhone, tab bars float and shrink on scroll, while sheets gain built-in insets and translucent backgrounds. Developers can extend content with the new backgroundExtensionEffect() modifier for a more immersive layout.

Controls receive polish and flexibility. Sliders support tick marks and neutral positions, toolbar items can carry badges, and monochrome icons provide a unified appearance. Text editing also improves as TextEditor now supports AttributedString for inline formatting, styling, and links.

Search becomes a first-class citizen. Developers can place search bars in toolbars, whether at the bottom of the iPhone, the top of the iPad, or the side of the Mac. New behaviors let you control when search bars expand, collapse, or persist, and even dedicate entire tabs to search experiences.

Concurrency is integrated at the framework level. With Swift’s new default actor isolation, SwiftUI code is automatically safer. Background tasks are intelligently offloaded to prevent blocking the main thread, for smooth animations and no UI stutters, even in complex apps.

SwiftUI also stretches into new domains. RealityKit integrates directly, letting you embed 3D scenes, immersive content, and interactive 3D charts. Developers can now build truly multimodal experiences without leaving the SwiftUI ecosystem.

Meet WebKit for SwiftUI

One of the most anticipated updates finally arrived at WWDC25: WebKit has been rebuilt as a native SwiftUI component. No more UIViewRepresentable or NSViewRepresentable workarounds. With the new WebView API, developers can embed web content directly into SwiftUI apps across iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

The API is more than a simple wrapper. It introduces a WebPage model that represents the state of the web content. You can load requests, HTML strings, or data blobs, and SwiftUI updates as the page transitions through navigation states such as start, redirect, commit, fail, and finish. Policy decisions are fully declarative, letting you approve or block navigation with SwiftUI-like clarity.

Developers can go further by injecting JavaScript using callJavaScript(_:arguments:in:contentWorld:), receiving typed results in Swift. Communication flows in both directions, so hybrid apps and embedded tools feel at home. WebKit in SwiftUI also supports navigation delegates, scroll behaviors, bounce effects, and geometry awareness, even adapting to visionOS’s unique scrolling input.

By baking WebKit directly into SwiftUI, Apple bridges the gap between native and web. Whether you need a hybrid UI, a documentation viewer, or a dynamic content container, the new WebView gives you full control without leaving SwiftUI’s declarative world.

Looking Ahead

Development is faster and lighter, concurrency is safer by default, and SwiftUI is now flexible enough to host everything from immersive 3D content to fully interactive web pages.

For developers, these changes mean fewer workarounds, cleaner code, and apps that feel smoother and more consistent across platforms.