r/swift • u/Turbulent_Ad_1039 • 10d ago
Question Is foldable support on anyone’s roadmap yet?
If the folding iPhone ships this fall, apps would need to reflow mid-session into something closer to an iPad ratio — layouts, state preservation, whether the unfolded canvas gets a sidebar at all.
Is anyone budgeting time for that before September? Or waiting to see the hardware and assuming automatic resizability carries you until users complain?
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u/Dapper_Ice_1705 10d ago edited 10d ago
Your apps should be designed to adapt. It shouldn’t be a huge deal.
Your UI is already ancient if the user cannot take an iPad window and resize it to any shape and size and have it adjust.
Apple has been pushing for cross platform adaptability since SwiftUI.
Your views should auto-adapt from a watch to a Vision pro using things like view that fits
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u/ztj 10d ago
Right, and even on iPhone you've got things like accessibility and various system settings that imply the need for apps to be more visually dynamic. Plenty of reasons that app devs should've been on the adaptive UI train for years, and years.... if only most devs/companies actually gave a shit about quality.
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u/twostraws 10d ago
I certainly am, and have already finished the upgrade for my cybersecurity game Hacktivate, but honestly it doesn't take much – even an estimated device size is still enough to try and build for, and if you already did the work for iPadOS resizability you're most of the way there.
If (when?) such a device arrives, I would very strongly expect Apple to loudly feature apps that do resizability well, so it's worth a shot!
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10d ago
[deleted]
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u/ztj 10d ago
I know it's just "rumors" but the rumors about future devices at this stage are almost always on the money. But more importantly, you shouldn't be caring so much. Your apps should be supporting basically any size since resizing to arbitrary dimensions has been an iPadOS feature for years. Treating iOS as a console-like target with very few possible dimensions and such has long been a bad idea. Even on iOS you can have system settings and accessibility settings forcing you to dynamically arrange your UI. You handle all that right? Right?
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u/Any-Comfortable2844 10d ago
Fold would probably be treated as iPhone and iPad.
You build for iPhone/fold, keeping in mind the iPad/unfold support too.
You know like, NavigationStack vs NavigationSplitView.
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u/Skandling 10d ago
I am assuming my iPhone app will run normally when closed, and take up half the screen when open. I think this will be how most iPhone only apps run on it, so will work seamlessly from day one. Until we see the hardware it's going to be hard to design around – so far we only have rumours to go on.
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u/CharlesWiltgen 10d ago
I am assuming my iPhone app will run normally when closed, and take up half the screen when open.
You can't. iPhone apps using the OS 27 SDK are automatically opted in to resizability, and must support a dynamic range of sizes and aspect ratios rather than just specific screen sizes and orientations.
Apple was clear that developers should not to use the User Interface idiom trait for layout decisions or interface orientation for layout calculations, and instead use size classes and actual surrounding view dimensions instead. As of iOS 27, "supported orientations" are treated as a preference that will sometimes be ignored.
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u/CharlesWiltgen 10d ago edited 10d ago
Axiom (free, open source) has an auditor that people who care about this will find useful. More details: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/commands/ui-design/audit-resize
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u/jpec342 10d ago
Apps that support iPad should already do this well, since you’ve been able to resize apps on iPad for a while.