With WWDC25 officially set for June 9th, iOS 19 is on the horizon. During the opening keynote, Apple will announce the next major versions of their operating systems. What features and changes can we expect? There have been a lot of discussions around some leaks recently. Typically, iOS design changes don’t leak in advance, so this year’s rumors are especially noteworthy. I want to focus on those rumored changes from the perspective of an indie app developer for a small app.
First, a complete redesign was speculated. I did not believe this to be a good move at a time when the AI features promised last year had to be postponed. Apple is clearly behind the schedule they announced, and it would be unwise to ship a complete redesign of the operating system next. It would create an immense amount of work internally at Apple and add significant pressure on third-party developers.
I was hoping for a smaller UI refresh where certain system components would get a slightly updated look and feel. This way, the work could be internalized at Apple, and most apps would benefit from that work immediately. The more you rely on system-provided controls, the smoother your migration process will be, since you are building your app in a way that Apple expects and supports. The recent leaks look exactly like that, and its what finally prompted me to write this post and give my two cents.
The redesign of system components in the spirit of visionOS — a frosted glass look, while keeping the overall iOS design language in place — seems to me like Apple decided on a good path forward. It works well with their physics-based animations that have already been part of iOS for a few years now. Especially system controls like control center already feature a design that does not require much adaptation to feel right at home on iOS 19.
Lets go through the rumored changes one by one, assuming they hold true:
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Rounded app icons: I do not see any reason to do this currently. It would be interesting to hear the story behind this. All app icons have just been updated with iOS 18 to support dark and tinted modes, however, a change in shape might cut off elements from some app icons and would therefore require developers to rebuild or even rethink their icons.
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Rounded tab bar: This seems like a design in-line with the current iPadOS 18 design of the same bar. It would bring consistency to both operating systems while keeping the tabs easily accessible for phone use. The Apple music app has a secondary bar above for its persistent music playing controls, suggesting that apps with bottom sheets would need at least a minor redesign to their implementation of that component. The contents of the sheets could stay the same but that might depend on your specific use-case. Maybe, alongside the changes this year, they publish a system components for such secondary bars?
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Elongated search bar: I really like this change. The integration of search functionality into the bottom of the screen, with a smooth transition between tabs and search mode, looks like it could work well. In addition, if you only provide search and no tabs at all, it is very prominent and easily accesible. No need to pull down the list of items just slightly to reveal the search bar anymore. This makes the search easier to find for new users as well.
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Slimmer toggles: At first glance, this looks weird. It probably is just a thing of habit and we will all feel like it is normal after a few days of use.
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Changed visuals of the default keyboard: Looks cleaner, and as long as it has options for better contrast for improved accessibility, I don’t have any notes.
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Widgets with a glass background: This request from David fits well with the frosted glass redesign of the system, and I hope that they ship this with iOS 19 as well.
Overall, I feel the incremental redesign is a good way to keep things fresh for users and developers alike. Everyone is looking on these UIs all day, and it feels nice to make it seem new, at least for a while.
The changes would probably be active for developers who build their apps with the iOS 19 SDK, giving us a few months to migrate our apps without requiring a complete stop on feature work. At the same time, they don’t seem too invasive for our layouts and could be handled mostly by system components. This makes developing an app with support for pre-iOS 19 system versions much easier since you do not necessarily have to test every change on separate OS versions.
If the rumors come to fruition, I’m looking forward to implementing the necessary changes in Bandwidth Monitor over the coming sommer.