WWDC 2025 is merely days away. With anticipation of a major iOS 26 overhaul, a former Apple employee appears to have leaked insights into what the new UI language may resemble.
Clearly, ex-Apple design team member (and Halide co-founder) Sebastiaan de With isn’t fabricating this iOS 26 concept from nothing. His ideas are rooted not only in his previous work with iOS, but also in Bloomberg’s report by Mark Gurman regarding what Apple’s rumored “Project Solarium” redesign might entail.
As reported earlier by Gurman, iOS 26 “will radically transform the appearance of the operating systems and strive to make Apple’s diverse software platforms more uniform.” He indicates that Apple intends to unify the aesthetics across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to create a more integrated experience, drawing from inspiration taken from visionOS.
In doing so, Apple will refresh icons, menus, apps, windows, and system buttons. This could mark the most notable redesign for the iPhone since iOS 7 and for the Mac since Big Sur. The primary objective of these enhancements is to foster greater consistency across Apple’s various platforms.
iOS redesign journey
In an in-depth article, de With elucidates how iOS (historically known as iPhone OS) commenced with a design language akin to Mac OS X Tiger. Apple predominantly employed intricate gradients and shadows in straightforward interface components to evoke the sensation of engaging with tangible items on the iPhone display.
From the debut version of iPhone OS through iOS 6, Apple continuously honed the design: “Deleting a note or email didn’t merely cause it to disappear from view; it was directed into a recycling bin icon that even opened and closed its lid as the document was drawn in,” remarks de With.
Subsequently, with iOS 7, everything transitioned to a flat aesthetic. The designer clarifies the rationale behind Apple’s decision: “iOS 7 adopted a concept of clear visual layers and utilized adaptive or dynamic effects to define depth and separation. Why depict flat highlights and shadows that do not respond to the user’s actual surroundings when you can distinguish the icons by rendering them on a separate plane from the background? Parallax allowed the icons to ‘float’ distinctly above the wallpaper. The notification center sheet could simply be a frosted pane over the content which blurred its backdrop for context.”
