WWDC 2025 Recap: A Radical New Design, Deeper AI, and the iPad Unleashed

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote for 2025 has just wrapped, and it was a whirlwind of transformative updates.

This year wasn't just about incremental features; it was about fundamentally rethinking the user experience across the entire ecosystem.

Apple unveiled its "broadest design update ever," a massive expansion of Apple Intelligence, and a game-changing new windowing system for iPad that users have been dreaming of.

In a move to create harmony across its platforms, Apple is unifying its version numbers. All the new operating systems announced today"”for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Vision Pro"”are designated as version 26, set to power devices through the 2026 year.

Let's break down all the major announcements.

A Universal New Look: Introducing "Liquid Glass"

The star of the show, spanning every single platform, is a stunning new design language. The foundation of this redesign is a new material Apple calls Liquid Glass.

Inspired by the physicality of visionOS, Liquid Glass is designed to make digital elements feel natural and alive. It's a translucent material that behaves like real glass, beautifully refracting light and reacting to movement with specular highlights. It dynamically adapts its color based on your content and context, shifting seamlessly between light and dark environments.

This new material is everywhere:

• Controls and Navigation: Toolbars and tab bars are made of Liquid Glass, dynamically morphing and shrinking to put content first.
• App Icons & Widgets: Icons are crafted with multiple layers of Liquid Glass, giving them depth and allowing them to adapt to new styles, including an "all-clear look."
• System Elements: The Lock Screen, notifications, and Control Center all adopt this new, fluid aesthetic, creating a more cohesive and intuitive experience.

Apple Intelligence: Smarter, Broader, and More Open

Last year's introduction of Apple Intelligence was just the start. In version 26, it gets significantly more capable and integrated.

• Foundation Models Framework: In a huge move, Apple is opening up its on-device large language models to developers. This new framework allows any app to tap directly into the core of Apple Intelligence for powerful, private, and offline-capable features without cloud API costs.
• ChatGPT Integration: Apple is integrating ChatGPT to augment its own models. When a user has a specific request that could benefit from broader world knowledge, Image Playground or other tools can send the query to ChatGPT (with explicit user permission) for unique image generation or answers.
• Live Translation: Powered by on-device models, this new feature provides real-time translation in Messages, FaceTime (with live captions), and the Phone app. Your conversations remain private while breaking down language barriers.

iOS 26: More Expressive and Intelligent

The iPhone experience gets a major overhaul with the new design and a host of smart features.

• Lock & Home Screen: The Lock Screen is more dynamic than ever. The time, rendered in Liquid Glass, fluidly adapts and nestles into your wallpaper photos. Using the Neural Engine, iOS 26 can now generate a spatial scene from your 2D photos, creating a 3D effect as you move your phone.
• App Redesigns:
  • Camera: A simplified design elevates the primary photo and video modes, with other features just a swipe away.
  • Photos: Tabs make a welcome return, separating Library and Collections.
  • Safari: Web pages flow edge-to-edge with a redesigned floating tab bar that shrinks as you scroll.
  • FaceTime: The landing page is now a celebration of your contacts, featuring their personalized posters and video message previews.
• CarPlay: The new design extends to the car. iOS 26 brings widgets and Live Activities to the CarPlay dashboard. CarPlay Ultra, which launched last month, also gets these updates, allowing for deep integration with a vehicle's climate and radio controls.
• Phone App Overhaul:
  • Unified Layout: An optional new view combines Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails into a single, convenient list.
  • Call Screening: Building on Live Voicemail, your iPhone can now automatically answer calls from unknown numbers, ask for the caller's name and reason for calling, and present that information to you before you decide to pick up.
  • Hold Assist: The Phone app can now wait on hold for you. It detects hold music, offers to wait, and alerts you with a ring when a live agent finally comes on the line.
• Messages Gets More Social:
  • Backgrounds: Set a dynamic or photo background for everyone in a conversation to see.
  • Polls: Settle group decisions easily with built-in polls. Apple Intelligence can even suggest creating one based on the conversation.
  • Typing Indicators & Apple Cash are now available in group chats.
• Visual Intelligence on Your Screen: Visual Intelligence now works on anything you're viewing on your iPhone. By pressing the screenshot buttons, you can access tools to search for objects (like a jacket or lamp) you see in an app, or have Apple Intelligence extract information like an event and add it directly to your calendar.

iPadOS 26: The Multitasking Powerhouse You've Waited For

This is arguably the biggest update of the day. iPadOS finally gets the powerful multitasking features users have been demanding.

• A New Windowing System: This is the headline feature. iPadOS 26 introduces a completely rearchitected windowing system.
  • Resizable Windows: Apps can be fluidly resized using a grab handle.
  • Tiling: Simply flick windows to the edges of the screen to tile them.
  • Exposé: A swipe-up-and-hold gesture reveals all your open windows.
  • Menu Bar: A full, familiar menu bar is now available at the top of the screen in apps, providing access to all features.
  • Universal Availability: This new system is available on every iPad that can run iPadOS 26, including the base iPad and iPad mini.
• Pro-Level File & Workflow Management:
  • Files App: The app is supercharged with resizable columns, collapsible folders, and the same folder customization (colors, icons) as macOS.
  • Folders in the Dock: Drag folders directly to your Dock for quick access.
  • Preview App: The beloved Preview app from macOS comes to iPad for powerful PDF and image editing.
  • Background Tasks: iPad can now run computationally heavy tasks, like a video export from DaVinci Resolve, in the background, with progress shown as a Live Activity.
• Advanced Audio/Video Tools:
  • Audio Input Selector: Choose which microphone to use on a per-app basis.
  • Local Capture: When recording a video podcast, you can enable this feature to capture a high-quality local recording of your own audio and video, free from conference call compression and echo.

watchOS 26: Your Proactive Health Partner

• Workout Buddy: This new Apple Intelligence feature acts as a real-time fitness coach. It analyzes your workout data and fitness history to provide personalized, dynamic vocal encouragement during your workout, delivered by a generative AI voice modeled after a Fitness+ trainer.
• Smarter System: The Smart Stack is more predictive, showing hints for widgets based on your routine and location. The watch can also now interpret ambient noise to automatically adjust notification volume.
• Wrist Flick Gesture: A new, simple wrist flick can be used to dismiss notifications, mute calls, or close the Smart Stack.
• Notes App: The Notes app finally arrives on Apple Watch for viewing and creating quick notes.

macOS Tahoe: More Personal and Powerful

Say hello to macOS Tahoe. The next version of the Mac operating system is all about powerful tools and personalization.

• Refined Design: The Liquid Glass design gives macOS a fresh look, highlighted by a now completely transparent menu bar that makes your display feel larger. You can now customize folders with colors and symbols.
• Continuity Upgrades:
  • Live Activities: Live Activities from your iPhone, like an Uber Eats order, now appear in the Mac menu bar.
  • Phone App for Mac: A full-featured Phone app comes to Mac, syncing your Recents and Voicemails and including the new Call Screening and Hold Assist features.
• Spotlight's Biggest Update Ever: Spotlight is no longer just a search bar. It's now a content browser and action launcher.
  • It intelligently suggests relevant files and can launch iPhone apps directly.
  • You can take system and app actions (e.g., "create event," "remove background") and even assign "quick keys" (like "sm" for send message) to them.
  • It now features a clipboard history, letting you easily access text, images, and links you copied earlier.

visionOS 26: The Spatial World Expands

Apple Vision Pro gets a huge update, making the spatial experience richer and more collaborative.

• Spatial Widgets & Persistent Apps: You can now place widgets in your space, and visionOS will remember where you place your apps, even after a restart.
• Persona Overhaul: Personas are out of beta and have undergone a "dramatic transformation" to be more realistic and lifelike. Crucially, you can now share a Vision Pro experience, like watching a movie, with another person in the same room.
• New Inputs: The platform now supports spatial accessories, including the Logitech Muse for 3D drawing and, notably, Sony PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers for more engaging games.
• The Spatial Web: Web developers can now embed 3D objects directly into web pages, which users can pull out into their space. This, combined with spatial Browse for articles, marks the beginning of the spatial web.

tvOS 26 & Developer Tools

• tvOS 26: The Apple TV experience is enhanced by the Liquid Glass design. Apple Music Sing gets more interactive, allowing you to use your iPhone as a microphone with visual effects on the TV.
• Developer Tools: Developers get a new Icon Composer app to easily create layered icons for the new design. Xcode gets more generative intelligence, with built-in support for ChatGPT's coding models to help write code, tests, and documentation.

This year's WWDC was a statement of vision. By creating a unified, beautiful design language and weaving a more powerful, open layer of intelligence through its entire lineup, Apple has set the stage for the next decade of personal computing.