Fourth installment of the WWDC 2026 recap for devs. The first three were about SwiftUI, Swift, and Xcode (part 1, part 2, and part 3). This one picks up what was left out: visionOS, the Siri shift, StoreKit, and Liquid Glass.
Note: still beta material; some details may move before the final release.
visionOS 27
This is where things moved most for anyone building spatial experiences. Apple’s official guide lays out three paths: native frameworks (RealityKit + SwiftUI), game engines (Unity, Unreal, and Godot), and the new Foveated Streaming framework for showing content from a PC or the cloud alongside spatial content.
The meat is in RealityKit, with concrete names:
- Physical space lighting: virtual light blends with the real environment, and objects cast light onto physical surfaces.
- Projective Textures API: textures on spotlights, for effects like stained-glass projections or underwater caustics.
- Real-time cloth simulation: fabrics like flags, curtains, or clothing that react to movement.
- Reverb Mesh API: spatial audio that models how sound gets absorbed and scattered depending on materials.
- 3D Gaussian Splats: renders photorealistic scans of real objects inside your scenes.
There’s also higher-frequency object tracking, a Metric space API for high-precision measurement (Apple cites uses like surgical-navigation training), and spatial accessory support up to 90 Hz.
App Intents takes over Siri
If your app talks to Siri, this one’s for you. App Intents is consolidating as the integration contract for Siri and Apple Intelligence: it’s no longer a Shortcuts thing, but the way to expose your app’s content and actions to the system. Press coverage points to SiriKit being on its way out, with a migration window of roughly two to three years (worth confirming against Apple’s docs once they’re published). (TechTimes)
Alongside it comes an App Intents Testing framework to test those intents, and Live Activities are still built with WidgetKit + App Intents. (Invidelabs)
StoreKit
More about workflow than new API, but useful if you sell anything: new flows for In-App Purchase submission, subscription configuration, game offers, StoreKit for Unity, and Managed Background Assets. (Invidelabs)
Liquid Glass: no more opt-out
A detail that touches everyone. When you rebuild against the new SDK, your app adopts Liquid Glass automatically: Apple removed the option to opt out. There’s an accessibility backstory: iOS 26’s implementation had documented legibility issues, and the updated HIG nudges you to revisit contrast. If you had a UI tightly tuned to the old look, it’s worth re-testing under the new appearance. (TechTimes)
That wraps (for real this time) our WWDC 2026 developer coverage: part 1 · part 2 · part 3 · part 4. Once the final releases and official docs land, we’ll correct anything that needs it.
Sources: Apple — What’s new in visionOS 27 · TechTimes — App Intents / SiriKit · TechTimes — Liquid Glass · Invidelabs — 7 announcements