During today’s WWDC 2025 keynote, held in person at Apple Park and streamed online, Apple unveiled a considerable number of upgrades to iOS and iPadOS, including a brand-new design language called Liquid Glass. This new look, which spans all of Apple’s platforms, coupled with a massive upgrade for multitasking on the iPad and numerous other additions and updates, made for packed releases for iOS and iPadOS.
Let’s take a look at everything Apple showed today for Liquid Glass, iOS, and iPadOS.
Every keynote, Apple is well-known for summarizing sections of the presentation with immaculately laid-out bento boxes containing key features. They often serve as good, easily digestible overviews of all the new features for each OS.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at all the bento boxes from today’s WWDC 2025 keynote.
At its WWDC 2025 keynote held earlier today, Apple officially announced the next version of macOS, macOS Tahoe. As per the company’s naming tradition over the past decade, this new release is once again named after a location in California. This year, however, to unify the version numbers across all its operating systems, Apple has decided to align the new release with the upcoming year. This is why the version number for macOS Tahoe will be macOS 26, directly up from last year’s macOS 15.
macOS 26 features the brand-new Liquid Glass design language, which Apple is also rolling out across iOS, iPadOS, visionOS, watchOS, and tvOS. But macOS Tahoe doesn’t stop there. In addition to the flashy new look, Apple has introduced many features, ranging from a supercharged new version of Spotlight and intelligent actions in Shortcuts to new Continuity and gaming-focused features for the Mac.
Here’s a recap of everything that Apple showed off today for macOS Tahoe.
While most of the new features announced at WWDC today are coming to Apple’s major OSes, the AirPods weren’t completely left out of the fun. Today, Apple revealed a couple of enhancements coming to the AirPods line this fall.
First up is a new camera remote feature. Users will soon be able to take a photo or start a video recording in the Camera app and compatible third-party apps on the iPhone and iPad by pressing and holding on the stem of their AirPods. If a video is already being recorded, a press-and-hold gesture will end the recording. This will be a nice replacement for the camera timer when you’re taking a group photo, and it will also come in handy for many online creators.
One of the big questions heading into today’s WWDC keynote was how Apple would address its AI efforts. After a splashy introduction last year followed by a staggered rollout and the eventual delay of the more personalized Siri, it was unclear how much focus the company would put on Apple Intelligence during its big announcement video.
Surprisingly, they came right out of the gate with a segment on Apple Intelligence, even going so far as to mention the fact that the more personalized Siri needed more time; it’s slated to be released “in the coming year.” But SVP of Software Craig Federighi also said that Apple Intelligence had progressed with more capable and efficient models and teased that more Apple Intelligence features would be revealed throughout the presentation. Rather than dedicating a significant portion of the keynote just to AI features, the company returned to a platform-centered structure for the rest of the video and mentioned Apple Intelligence as it related to each OS.
In its second year, Apple Intelligence is set to expand in more ways than one. Perhaps most excitingly, third-party developers will soon have access to Apple Intelligence’s on-device foundation model, enabling them to implement AI features in their apps that work offline in a privacy-respecting way. And because the framework is local, it will be available to developers at no additional cost with no API fees.
As part of this year’s WWDC keynote, Apple today announced visionOS 26, the next major version of visionOS coming this fall. The update features new ways for users to experience spatial content, display information in their environment, and interact with apps and games. It represents the next step forward for Apple’s vision of spatial computing, including what the company refers to as “the spatial web.”
Since Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language borrows heavily from visionOS, design changes won’t be as striking on the platform. The most prominent user-facing feature of the update is likely to be spatial widgets.
Up to this point, native widgets have been completely absent on visionOS, and the company has introduced them in a way that is consistent with its other devices while adding a spatial flair. Widgets can be customized to include a border and a depth effect to blend in with the user’s environment, and they remain fixed persistently in place even after the Vision Pro restarts. Built-in options like the Clock, Calendar, Music, and Photos widgets were featured, though third-party developers will be able to provide their own widget options via the new Widgets app.
Various ways of experiencing spatial content have been enhanced in visionOS 26 as well. Building on last year’s introduction of spatial photo conversion, Apple this year added a feature called spatial scenes to all of its platforms. Spatial scenes add depth to photos, enabling users to experience their pictures from different perspectives by moving their heads. These scenes can be viewed in Photos, the Spatial Gallery, and Safari, and developers can add them to their own apps. visionOS 26 also adds native support for playing back 180-degree, 360-degree, and wide field-of-view content.
This year’s WWDC was a packed event by most metrics. Apple introduced a new visual style across all of its platforms called Liquid Glass. Not only that, but the company also announced significant multitasking updates to iPadOS, powerful features for Spotlight on macOS, and numerous other upgrades across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.
If you missed the event or want to revisit any of the announcements, you can now do so on Apple’s Events site (where it’s also available in ASL) or on YouTube. We’ll be posting coverage of all the new features and more in the coming hours and days, so stay tuned to MacStories.
The company has put out some other videos highlight today’s announcements as well:
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Comfort Zone
Comfort Zone has completed its first year! Instead of doing a clip show or something, the gang gets right down to business doing what they do best: complaining about browsers, going down an audiophile rabbit hole, and battling to see who has the best Mac background app.
NPC: Next Portable Console
This week, Federico and John walk listeners through their first impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2, including the hardware, the setup process, Super Mario Kart World, the Zelda upgrades, the new Pro Controller, and more.
For this week’s NPC XL, Brendon joins Federico and John from Tokyo with questions about their experiences with the Nintendo Switch 2. After more play time, the crew covers accessories, Mario Kart World’s unique features, battery life, and the experience of playing Cyberpunk 2077.
Magic Rays of Light
Sigmund and Devon highlight the premiere of Apple Original comedy series Stick starring Owen Wilson. Then, they compete to predict what’s in store for Apple TV at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
MacStories Unwind
MacStories Unwind is taking a two-week WWDC holiday starting this week. We’ll be back with another episode the week after WWDC – Thursday, June 19, for Club MacStories members and Friday, June 20, for everyone else.
Reuters reported today that the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth District has denied Apple’s motion to stay the effect of District Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ contempt order that required the company to allow developers to link to payment processing outside the App Store. Had Apple prevailed, Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ order would have been put on hold, allowing Apple to prevent developers from linking to external payment processing. Instead, developers can continue to add external payment options to their apps, which many already have.
The burden for staying an order pending appeal is high. As the Court of Appeals explained in its order:
In deciding whether to impose a stay, we consider:
“(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits;
(2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay;
(3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and
(4) where the public interest lies.”
Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 426 (2009) (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 776 (1987)).
This doesn’t mean Apple has no chance to win on appeal, but as the Ninth Circuit said quite bluntly in its order:
…we are not persuaded that a stay is appropriate.
And, given that the first factor the court decided was whether Apple is “likely to succeed on the merits,” things are not looking promising.
We are disappointed with the decision not to stay the district court’s order, and we’ll continue to argue our case during the appeals process. As we’ve said before, we strongly disagree with the district court’s opinion. Our goal is to ensure the App Store remains an incredible opportunity for developers and a safe and trusted experience for our users.
Given that the writing is on the wall for the appeal, you can bet Apple is already looking ahead to the U.S. Supreme Court and will use the Ninth Circuit case as a dry run for that subsequent appeal.