After presenting its next-generation operating systems on stage at WWDC 2025, including the new iOS 26, Apple held a panel dedicated to developers where it announced Xcode 26, its development environment which gets a makeover for 2025 and is packed with new features. Xcode 26 is now available for download via the following link, Xcode 26 beta includes SDKs for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, watchOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, and visionOS 26. The Xcode 26 beta release supports on-device debugging in iOS 16 and later, tvOS 16 and later, watchOS 8 and later, and visionOS. Xcode 26 beta requires a Mac running macOS Sequoia 15.4 or later.
At WWDC25, Apple announced new technologies and enhancements to developer tools that will help every developer create more beautiful, intelligent, and engaging apps across all Apple platforms. A beautiful new software design puts more focus on content and delivers more expressive and enjoyable experiences across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26, while still feeling familiar. The Foundation Models framework joins a suite of tools that unlock on-device intelligence, and Xcode 26 takes advantage of LLM models like ChatGPT to provide access to Coding Tools and other intelligent features.
These new capabilities build on Apple’s broad and evolving set of technologies that developers can enjoy, including more than 250,000 APIs that allow developers to integrate their apps with Apple hardware and software. The APIs cover a wide range of capabilities, including machine learning, augmented reality, health and fitness, spatial computing and high-performance graphics. With these new releases, Apple is expanding and improving the technologies and development tools that help developers bring their ideas to life by creating rich, responsive experiences that are optimized for all Apple platforms.
Finally, AI also enters the workflow and in fact developers will be able to write code, tests and documentation in an assisted way, correct errors and bugs in real time, iterate on designs and implementation suggestions and generate code previews and structures to then integrate and use them in apps. This is possible thanks to the direct integration with ChatGPT, which will be accessible even without creating an account, while users subscribed to ChatGPT Plus will be able to connect their account to increase usage limits and performance.
New design with Liquid Glass
The elegant new design gives developers the ability to create more expressive and beautiful apps, while still feeling instantly familiar. It is made with Liquid Glass, a new software-based material that combines the optical qualities of glass with a sense of fluidity. This stunning new material extends from the smallest elements that users interact with every day, like buttons, switches, sliders, text, and media controls, to the largest ones, like tab bars and app sidebars.
Native frameworks like SwiftUI give every developer everything they need to adopt the new design in their apps. And with this universal design, you will be able to make user content stand out more, creating a uniform experience when developing apps for different Apple platforms.
With the new Icon Composer app, developers and designers can create visually compelling icons to strengthen the visual identity of their apps. This powerful tool lets you give your app icons a uniform visual identity by annotating layers for different rendering modes, with advanced features that include the ability to apply blurs, adjust transparency, test highlights and specular reflections, and preview your icons in various colors.
Following the example of Apple Intelligence, Xcode also opens up to third-party models and developers will be able to use API keys to integrate any AI model directly into their work environment. In this way, Xcode becomes modular and compatible with the entire AI ecosystem.
Foundation Models Framework
With the Foundation Models framework, developers can leverage Apple Intelligence to deliver new, intelligent experiences that are available even when the user is offline and designed around privacy, using zero-cost AI inference.
The framework offers native support for Swift, so developers can easily access the Apple Intelligence model by writing just three lines of code. Guided generation, function calls, and other features are built into the framework, making it easier than ever to implement generative capabilities directly into your existing app. For example, Apple says Automattic uses the framework in its Day One app, a digital diary, to deliver privacy-centric intelligence features.
Apple Xcode 26
Xcode 26 offers a wealth of intelligence and experiences to help developers turn their ideas into reality.
Developers can integrate LLM directly into their programming experience to write code, test, document, iterate on a design, fix bugs, and more. Xcode has built-in support for ChatGPT, and you can use API keys from other providers or run local models on Macs with Apple chips, so you can choose the model that best fits your needs. You don’t need to create an account to get started with ChatGPT in Xcode, but subscribers can link their accounts to access more requests.
Coding Tools help every developer work more fluidly and productively. Accessible from anywhere in the code, Coding Tools provide suggested actions, such as generating a preview or playground, fixing an error, or even managing specific prompts for other tasks directly from the lines of code.
Xcode 26 also includes other features that help developers stay focused and productive, such as redesigned navigation, improvements to the localization catalog, and deeper integration with Voice Control, so you can dictate Swift code and navigate the Xcode interface using just your voice.
App Intents
App Intents enables developers to deeply integrate their app actions and content with system experiences across platforms, including Siri, Spotlight, widgets, controls, and more.
This year, App Intents is adding support for visual intelligence, allowing apps to provide results in the system’s visual search experience, and the user can open the app directly from those results.
Swift 6.2
Swift 6.2 introduces powerful features to improve performance, concurrency, and interoperability with other languages like C++, Java, and JavaScript. And now, in collaboration with the open source community, Swift 6.2 adds support for WebAssembly.
By expanding on Swift 6’s powerful concurrency features, Swift 6.2 makes it easier to write single-threaded code. You can now configure modules or individual files to run by default on the main thread, eliminating the need for additional annotations.
Apple Tools and Resources for Games
Game Porting Toolkit 3 provides developers with updated tools to evaluate and profile their games. Developers can now customize the Metal Performance HUD and display on-screen information and guidance to help optimize their graphics code for the best possible performance in the evaluation environment. Additionally, with Mac Remote Developer Tools for Windows, developers can create Mac games on a remote Mac as part of their existing development workflows.
Metal 4 is designed exclusively for Apple chips, paving the way for the next generation of games on Apple platforms with support for advanced graphics and machine learning technologies.
Developers can now run inference networks directly on their shaders to process lighting, materials, and geometry, enabling realistic visual effects in games. MetalFX FrameInterpolation generates an intermediate frame for every two input frames for higher, more consistent frame rates, while MetalFX Denoising enables real-time path tracing and ray tracing in the most advanced games.
The Apple Games app brings all your games and the people you play with together in one place across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It also gives developers a new dedicated app to engage their existing fan base and attract new audiences.
Challenges transform single-player games into shared experiences by letting you compete with others in high-score contests. Developers can easily integrate challenges into games that use Game Center leaderboards, giving them even more ways to assemble a group, declare a winner, or set up a rematch.
