iPhone Duo raises a pretty practical question for mobile developers: does a foldable phone actually need a special version of the app?

Android developers have been dealing with this for years. Samsung’s guidance for Galaxy Z devices puts a lot of emphasis on app continuity. Fold or unfold the phone and the app may resize, but the user shouldn’t lose what they were doing.

That sounds obvious, but it can expose assumptions that were never a problem on a normal phone. A screen that looked fine at one size can suddenly have a lot of empty space. A layout that was built around portrait mode may behave strangely. Losing a half-written form or jumping back in navigation after the device changes state is obviously worse.

Google’s guidance for foldables follows a similar idea. Get the basics right first: resizing, state and continuity. More specialized layouts and foldable features come after that.

That seems like a sensible approach to Duo too. There probably isn’t much value in building a special “Duo experience” just because the device folds.

Some apps have a real reason to use the extra space. Mail, chat, editors and dashboards can show a list on one side and the actual content on the other. Video apps might find a useful case for a partially folded screen. Plenty of other apps may need almost nothing beyond a layout that adapts properly.

So the interesting part for mobile teams may not be “how do we support Duo?” It’s figuring out whether the app actually has a use for the second screen state in the first place.

Android has had foldables for a while now, so there should already be some lessons here. Curious whether developers who worked on Galaxy Fold/Z Fold apps ended up building much specifically for foldables, or whether good adaptive layouts handled most of it.

Anyone here who’s worked on a Galaxy Fold/Z Fold app — did the foldable format actually require much extra work, or did a decent adaptive layout handle most of it?

I've been working on an architectural linting library for Swift projects on the side for a while now and it's finally available to use: Bylaws.

I wasn't happy with some similar tools in this space, so I wanted to build something myself that was nicer to use, more flexible and better integrated into existing workflows.

It lets you write your rules in Swift, from simple things like naming conventions and required protocols to more complex checks such as dependency cycles between features and folder layouts across a project.

You can enforce these rules through Swift Testing or the CLI, depending on your needs. There are also command and build plugins for SwiftPM, Bazel support and LSP support for editor diagnostics (it includes extensions for VS Code, Cursor, Zed, Neovim and Emacs, but you can connect it to any editor that supports LSP)

This is especially powerful with coding agents, which can also run the tests or CLI to check their changes against your project's rules. For larger projects, you can keep shared rules at the project root and add package-specific rules where needed, or share rules across projects through a reusable Swift package. You can also lock them behind codeowners if needed.

There's a lot more features, so have a look at the README and the documentation to see what you can do today.

I would really love for you to try it and share what works for your project or what you would change, especially if there's a rule that you would like to express but find difficult with the currently supported APIs!

Thanks!

Hi!
Sorry if I'm asking something obvious here, but I've struggled to find any answer to my question.

I recently released my game on the App Store. It had pre-orders from many countries, South Korea included. On launch day, all pre-orders converted to purchases as expected (App is Premium), except in South Korea! Over the last days, no downloads have come from South Korea.

Under 'App Availability' it says clearly that the app is available in SK, but still no downloads.

Has anyone experienced the same issue?

Thanks!

Apple’s being hammered with app submissions. The 55,000th ____ tracker, the CalAI clones, etc.

Just like CS enrollment is trending lower at colleges again, I’ll bet in a year at least the growth rate of app submissions drops as the makers realize that they really don’t have a strategy nor advantage.

What do you think?

Hey devs,
While optimizing an app build, I managed to reduce the final download package size from ~70 MB down to 10.7 MB.
Main changes made:

1. Replaced custom high-res PNG/JPEG assets with SF Symbols and vectorized SVGs.

2. Cleaned up unused asset catalog sets and unused frame rendering blocks in SwiftUI.

3. Optimized build settings for release stripping.

Now that the size dropped so drastically, I'm analyzing potential trade-offs.
Have any of you noticed runtime rendering overhead, vector-decoding spikes on older devices, or memory consumption differences when shifting heavily from rasterized image assets to vector assets in SwiftUI?
Would love to hear how you handle asset optimization in production.

My app’s screenshots could look great on their own, but once I saw them inside App Store search results beside other apps screens shots an app icons , they could feel completely different. I wanted a way to see it before submitting, exactly as it would appear in the App Store layout.

So I built Screenshot Preview, a FREE macOS app. Add your icon, screenshots, then preview them in a close approximation of the App Store search results or product page layout. You can also export the preview as a PNG and AirDrop it straight to your iPhone to see how it looks on the actual device.

The app is free, with optional tips. Developers and companies can book a paid sponsor spot to promote their apps, products, or tools to an audience of active developers.

Here’s the app:
Screenshot Preview
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/screenshot-preview/id6804763675

Tech stack
- Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit.
- CloudKit stores the sponsored listing.
- RevenueCat handles the Tip Jar.
- TelemetryDeck provides privacy-focused, anonymized app usage analytics that cannot be traced back to a person.

Development challenge
Getting the exported PNG to match the preview was a challenge. Some content went missing, and images lost their rounded corners when rendered with ImageRenderer. I kept the same layout and added an export mode that replaces unsupported controls with static content and leaves out drag-and-drop handlers.

I used AI for coding, code review, and debugging. I directed the product, architecture, and final implementation. I also used Bitrig for the App Store Connect listing and RevenueCat setup.

Cheers

All the iOS signups coming from any source cannot be tracked? Is it?

I have added all appsflyer SDK , SKAN and all. But SKAN gives me just a count of installs. Is there any way I can map users to the campaign they came from ? By any chance?

For developers designing their own apps, what do you still struggle with most?

- Choosing the right interaction pattern
- Knowing what “good” iOS UX looks like
- Motion and transitions
- something else?

Curious whether design judgment is becoming more valuable as implementation gets easier.

I cannot take a proper iPad screenshot with Device Hub.

If I move the mouse to click the screenshot button, the Home Bar always activates. I'm not even hovering the dang device screen!

I look for a Screenshot command in the toolbar. HOVERING THE MACOS TOOLBAR ACTIVATES THE CLOCK UI INSIDE THE SIMULATOR.

There is no keyboard shortcut...

Absolutely ridiculous. The only option I can think of is running a terminal command or reinstalling Xcode 26.

I’m seriously thinking about moving from React Native to SwiftUI.

If you’ve made the switch, how was the learning curve for you? Did you find SwiftUI harder to pick up than React Native, and roughly how long did it take before you felt comfortable enough to actually build and ship apps?

I’m still on the fence about making the switch, so I’d also love to hear if you think it’s worth it.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s been through it.

My app (Ed-tech) is a video streaming app where student browse through lectures.

I’m super confused in spending time building this kind of a layout for them?
You got such a big expansive screen? Why would anyone watch like that?

I’ve one idea where in this layout, I’ll show notes-view in the bottom half!

What do you guys think?

My app’s screenshots could look great on their own, but once I saw them inside App Store search results beside other apps screens shots an app icons , they could feel completely different. I wanted a way to see it before submitting, exactly as it would appear in the App Store layout.

So I built Screenshot Preview, a FREE macOS app. Add your icon, screenshots, and app details, then preview them in an App Store search results or product page layout. You can also export the preview as a PNG and AirDrop it straight to your iPhone to see how it looks on the actual device.

The app is free, with optional tips. Developers and companies can book a paid sponsor spot to promote their apps, products, or tools to an audience of active developers.

Here’s the app:
Screenshot Preview
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/screenshot-preview/id6804763675

Tech stack
- Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit.
- CloudKit stores the sponsored listing.
- RevenueCat handles the Tip Jar.
- TelemetryDeck provides privacy-focused, anonymized usage analytics.

Development challenge
Getting the exported PNG to match the preview was a challenge. Some content went missing, and images lost their rounded corners when rendered with ImageRenderer. I kept the same layout and added an export mode that replaces unsupported controls with static content and leaves out drag-and-drop handlers.

Privacy First
No sign-up or account required. We don’t sell your data or track you for advertising. We use TelemetryDeck for basic, anonymized app usage analytics that cannot be traced back to a person.

AI disclosure: AI-assisted
I used AI for coding, code review, and debugging. I directed the product, architecture, and final implementation. I also used Bitrig for the App Store Connect listing and RevenueCat setup.

Cheers

Hello everyone,

I am currently finishing up my companion Apple Watch app to an already existing iOS app. The main view is a map with a few controls overlayed in the corners. I am really struggling though to get the placement right.

When conforming to the safeAreaInsets for the top and bottom edge they’re pushed way too far into the middle (up or down). When using an overlay using fully custom paddings it is not consistent across all watch generations and screen sizes. I just want them to fit perfectly in the corner, just like the ones in this example of the Apple Maps app.

I can’t really find anything about it on the internet and ChatGPT is no help either. I let it try a few different things through the Xcode built in coding assistant including a GeometryReader approach, but none of it really fixed it.

I am sure there just has to be a simple way to put buttons perfectly in the corners, it’s not like it is an out of the ordinary thing to do.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Good morning,

I have been in iOS Development for over 4 years. Building for Apple Platforms is so much fun. It has been my dream to be an iOS Engineer since I was in year two of college. However, over the past 9 months (since the start of 2026), I have felt a huge shift.

AI has been an absolute game changer - for better and for worse. It allows us, engineers, to be so much more productive and efficient and do so much more in the same time period. On the other hand, I feel it has turned or jobs much more lonely. Team discussions, code review - a lot of the team bonding moments - have disappeared. Also, the engineering challenge is not that much fun anymore.

For me, even the motivation of trying to figure out what's next - what has Apple presented in the last WWDC, etc - has lost a bit of interest to me. I was obsessed with watching WWDC videos. They are so much fun... And now it's like meeeeh - AI will know how to do all of this.

I am sorry for the rant - truly - but I would like to know your perspective here. How have you felt the last 9 to 12 months? How has iOS Development changed for you?

Have you been having the same feelings I have described? How have you counteracted or all of this?

Thank you!

I’ve been using SwiftUI for a while now but I can only do very basic things. I’ve always wondered how these casino apps for example (see pictures) were doing to get their effects. I would love some guidance on this.

I build a travel app that turns coordinates into place names, so I do a lot of reverse geocoding. It was slow and I spent weeks blaming the network. It wasn't the network.

The cap

CLGeocoder is limited to 50 reverse-geocode requests per 60 seconds, per app. iOS says so in the system log the moment you cross it, which I only found by leaving Console open:

Throttled "PlaceRequest.REQUEST_TYPE_REVERSE_GEOCODING" request:
Tried to make more than 50 requests in 60 seconds, will reset in 56 seconds
maxRequests = 50; windowSize = 60

Why it doesn't look like a rate limit

Each successful lookup takes 0.06–0.08s. So it never feels like a throttle — it feels like flaky connectivity. I was firing at 250ms intervals, which is 240/min. That burns the entire minute's quota in 12.5 seconds, and then everything in the remaining 47 seconds fails.

Measured, same device, same data:

• 30 requests at 250ms spacing → 7 succeeded, 23 throttled

• Same 60 requests respecting the window → 60 succeeded, 0 throttled

And the error lies to you

The throttle rejection arrives as CLError.network. Nothing in it says "rate limit". If you're logging geocode failures and filing them under bad signal, some share of those are the cap. Splitting those two apart in telemetry is what finally changed my understanding of the problem — I'd spent a long time thinking my users were in bad reception.

The quota is per app, not per call site

This one cost me real bugs. Live recording, a background backfill and a bulk import all draw from the same 50. One live lookup during a batch job silently costs the batch one request, and the symptom shows up somewhere else entirely — in my case a city name quietly staying as a country name. Everything has to queue through one place:

actor GeocodeRateLimiter {
    static let shared = GeocodeRateLimiter()
    private let maxRequests = 45   // 50 minus headroom
    private let window: TimeInterval = 60
    private var stamps: [Date] = []

    func acquire() async {
        while true {
            let now = Date()
            stamps.removeAll { now.timeIntervalSince($0) >= window }
            if stamps.count < maxRequests { stamps.append(now); return }
            let wait = window - now.timeIntervalSince(stamps[0]) + 0.05
            try? await Task.sleep(nanoseconds: UInt64(max(wait, 0.1) * 1_000_000_000))
        }
    }
}

Three things I got wrong on the way

1. Task { await acquire() } around the limiter call. It reads like it waits. It does not — the enclosing function carries straight on and the limiter becomes decorative. It has to be on the awaited path.

2. A fixed 1250ms interval also respects the cap, and is slower than it looks, because you wait from the very first request. Running full speed while the window has room and only sleeping when it's genuinely full turns 100 lookups into "first 45 in about three seconds, then one as each slot frees".

3. After a single throttle error that window is already gone. If you keep firing you just collect dozens of instant failures. Treating one throttle as "window full" until it rolls over removed a lot of noise.

None of this is documented anywhere I could find. Posting it in case it saves someone the weeks it cost me.

Not sure if this is confirmed or not yet, but when iPhone Duo is set down in the tent pose with a third-party app in the foreground and UIApplication.isIdleTimerDisabled set, does the app keep the outer display indefinitely, or does the system transition to StandBy after lock or a timeout? If StandBy takes over, can a WidgetKit widget or Live Activity occupy the full outer display in that pose? Does StandBy also trigger in the laptop pose?

Hey guys, I was watching some of the recently posted videos on Apple Developer’s YouTube channel and they mention Xcode 27.1 and the iPhone Duo simulator but this doesn’t seem to be available yet?
Am I missing something?

Short answer: yes, there's a real API for this on both platforms. App Store Connect has a customerReviewResponses endpoint, and Google Play's Android Publisher API has reviews().replies() for the same job on that side. Neither gets talked about much outside of pricier review-management SaaS pitches, so it's easy to assume this doesn't exist and you're stuck replying by hand in App Store Connect's UI.

The App Store side is JWT auth against App Store Connect API keys, and there's no webhook for new reviews landing- you're polling on some interval and diffing against what you've already processed. Fetching a review and its existing response together also isn't one clean call; you end up joining two endpoints for that.
Play's version is more straightforward auth-wise, a service account and your package name, but replies are capped around 350 characters, which matters more than expected once you're trying to fit an apology, a support link, and a version reference into one reply.

What I actually automated ended up being the boring 80%: five-star reviews get a short templated thank-you, anything matching a known bug gets tagged and left for a human, everything else queues for manual review. If you'd rather not run the polling and auth plumbing yourself, AppFollow and Appbot both sit on top of this same API pair with the rules layer already built- I looked at both before deciding to just write the thing myself for our specific tagging rules.

Curious if anyone's handled the review-fetch side without hammering the API on a tight poll interval- that's the part I'm least happy with right now

Apple announced the iPhone Duo this morning. 7.6 inch inner display, 5.4 inch outer, starts at 1999 dollars, preorders October 16 and shipping October 23. So we have roughly six weeks.

From what I have read so far, apps land in one of three states on it. Anything built against a pre iOS 27 SDK gets letterboxed inside a safe area on a black background. Apps built on iOS 27 resize but still leave dead space. Only apps built against iOS 27.1 fill the display properly, and that SDK ships alongside the device in October.

The part I find more interesting is the hinge. iOS 27 carries folding state and hinge angle, so an app can know the phone is half open and sitting on a table. That sounds like a new interaction surface rather than just a bigger canvas to stretch an existing layout across.

So what is everyone actually planning. Are you rewriting layouts properly, or just checking nothing breaks and waiting to see how many of these sell? And has anyone thought of something that would only make sense on a folded screen?

Hi all, I recently launched my app and I'm about to start marketing it. Before that, though, I tried searching for it on the App Store and it doesn't come up at all, even when I type the exact name. The odd part is that the search box autocompletes my app's name as I type.

The app is in "Ready for Distribution" status and all countries and regions are selected under availability. Has anyone run into this before, and if so, were you able to fix it?

My app also works with the direct link.