Phil's Blog

Latest — Jun 12, 2025

Built-in support for Swift Observable in AppKit and UIKit on macOS 26 and iOS 26

macOS 14 and iOS 17 saw the introduction of the Observation framework and the Observable macro, allowing your SwiftUI views to automatically update in response to underlying data changing. However, that initial implementation contained really limited capabilities for consuming Observable types from outside SwiftUI. Before macOS 26 and iOS 26

More issues

In-process animations and transitions with CADisplayLink, done right

Admittedly, animation and transition techniques on macOS are not as widely applied or evolved as they may be on iOS-based platforms, and information and advice around them can be scattered and oftentimes outdated. So, let’s fix that and try to outline some best practices, as well as establish some

Document-based SwiftUI apps on visionOS 2.4 are unusable due to a regression

TL;DR: As a result of a gnarly regression, every document-based SwiftUI app on visionOS 2.4 is duplicating views, rendering document-based app completely unusable on the platform. I was working on porting one of my side project apps from macOS to visionOS, and at some point wanted to test

The Curious Case of NSPanel's Nonactivating Style Mask Flag

While working on a behavior that required dynamically switching between the nonactivating panel behavior and one that is more similar to the regular window behavior, I discovered a subtle but significant issue in AppKit: changing the NSWindowStyleMaskNonactivatingPanel flag after an NSPanel has been initialized doesn't fully update the

Adding Subtitles macOS Menu Items using SwiftUI

At this point, AppKit developers with their finger on the pulse may be familiar with setting subtitles on NSMenuItem using the subtitle property, which has been available since macOS 14.4. In fact, I was the one who added it back when I worked at Apple. Achieving the same in

Building a Universal Mini vMac Application

This project demonstrates a collection of techniques for consolidating various Mini vMac variations into one application, enabling better code reuse and simplifying maintenance.

Mysterious Runtime Crashes in Swift 6 Language Mode

Swift 6 language mode promises compile-time stricter concurrency checking, aimed at preventing and eliminating data races, runtime memory corruption, as well as other common but hard to debug issues. While adopting the new language mode can be a bit of a challenge for larger or less modular projects, Swift 6

Implementing a Modern SwiftUI Circular Progress Bar & Control

When I first wrote PZCircularControl in 2019, SwiftUI was still in its early days. The framework has matured significantly since then, introducing new features that enable interactions that were previously only achievable by dropping down to the Kits. Recently, I revisited the codebase and decided that a complete refactor of

NSDrawer, Child Windows, and Modern macOS Applications

NSDrawer is undoubtedly one of the more creative and iconic use cases for so-called "child windows" on macOS. Despite that, drawers have been deprecated in macOS 10.13 and seemingly forgotten since then. You can hardly find any use of drawers in any macOS applications these days. Visiting

A Time Capsule from NeXT Computer, Inc.

A couple of months ago I took a trip to Fortuna, CA – a roughly 5 hour drive from my home in San Jose – to pick up a Macintosh Quadra 700 for my modest albeit growing collection of vintage hardware. From what I gathered, the person selling the machine finds and