How should I design an iPad app using Apple's HIG?

Apple's HIG recommends using sidebars instead of bottom tab bars on iPadOS, supporting split views for multitasking, and adding pointer interactions. Apple HIG Skills provides instant, AI-ready guidance on all iPadOS conventions.

What are Apple's guidelines for adding Apple Pay?

Apple's HIG specifies exact payment button placement, flow design, error states, and UX patterns required for App Store approval. Apple HIG Skills gives your AI agent access to the full Apple Pay design guidelines.

How do I make my Apple app accessible?

Apple's HIG requires support for VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, sufficient color contrast ratios, and motor accessibility features like Switch Control. Apple HIG Skills covers all accessibility foundations and requirements.

How do I design for visionOS and Apple Vision Pro?

Apple's HIG for visionOS covers ornaments, volumes, immersive spaces, eye tracking, and spatial interaction patterns. Apple HIG Skills includes dedicated visionOS platform guidance and spatial layout references.

What are Apple's dark mode design guidelines?

Apple's HIG specifies using system semantic colors, material backgrounds, elevated surfaces, and vibrancy for dark mode. Apps should test in both modes and avoid hard-coded color values. Apple HIG Skills covers the full dark mode specification.

How should I design notifications for iOS apps?

Apple's HIG covers notification grouping, Live Activities, action buttons, and respecting user attention. Apple HIG Skills provides guidelines for the full notification system including widgets and complications.

Source: Apple Inc. Canonical content at https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/accessibility. This file is a structured index of that content, snapshot 2025-02-02. Apple HIG text and imagery are © Apple Inc.; this repository provides organization and cross-referencing for AI agent consumption only.

Accessibility

Intuitive. Your interface uses familiar and consistent interactions that make tasks straightforward to perform.
Perceivable. Your interface doesn’t rely on any single method to convey information. People can access and interact with your content, whether they use sight, hearing, speech, or touch.
Adaptable. Your interface adapts to how people want to use their device, whether by supporting system accessibility features or letting people personalize settings.

Vision

Support larger text sizes.

Use recommended defaults for custom type sizes.

Bear in mind that font weight can also impact how easy text is to read.

Strive to meet color contrast minimum standards.

Prefer system-defined colors.

Convey information with more than color alone.

Describe your app’s interface and content for VoiceOver.

Hearing

Support text-based ways to enjoy audio and video.

Captions give people the textual equivalent of audible information in video or audio-only content. Captions are great for scenarios like game cutscenes and video clips where text synchronizes live with the media.
Subtitles allow people to read live onscreen dialogue in their preferred language. Subtitles are great for TV shows and movies.
Audio descriptions are interspersed between natural pauses in the main audio of a video and supply spoken narration of important information that’s presented only visually.
Transcripts provide a complete textual description of a video, covering both audible and visual information. Transcripts are great for longer-form media like podcasts and audiobooks where people may want to review content as a whole or highlight the transcript as media is playing.

Use haptics in addition to audio cues.

Augment audio cues with visual cues.

Mobility

Offer sufficiently sized controls.

Consider spacing between controls as important as size.

Support simple gestures for common interactions.

Offer alternatives to gestures.

Let people use Voice Control to give guidance and enter information verbally.

Integrate with Siri and Shortcuts to let people perform tasks using voice alone.

Support mobility-related assistive technologies.

Speech

Let people use the keyboard alone to navigate and interact with your app.

Support Switch Control.

Cognitive

Keep actions simple and intuitive.

Minimize use of time-boxed interface elements.

Consider offering difficulty accommodations in games.

Let people control audio and video playback.

Allow people to opt out of flashing lights in video playback.

Be cautious with fast-moving and blinking animations.

Tightening animation springs to reduce bounce effects
Tracking animations directly with people’s gestures
Avoiding animating depth changes in z-axis layers
Replacing transitions in x-, y-, and z-axes with fades to avoid motion
Avoiding animating into and out of blurs

Optimize your app’s UI for Assistive Access.

Identify the core functionality of your app and consider removing noncritical workflows and UI elements.
Break up multistep workflows so people can focus on a single interaction per screen.
Always ask for confirmation twice whenever people perform an action that’s difficult to recover from, such a deleting a file.

Platform considerations

visionOS

Pointer Control (hand)
Pointer Control (head)
Zoom

Prioritize comfort.

Keep interface elements within a person’s field of view. Prefer horizontal layouts to vertical ones that might cause neck strain, and avoid demanding the viewer’s attention in different locations in quick succession.
Reduce the speed and intensity of animated objects, particularly in someone’s peripheral vision.
Be gentle with camera and video motion, and avoid situations where someone may feel like the world around them is moving without their control.
Avoid anchoring content to the wearer’s head, which may make them feel stuck and confined, and also prevent them from using assistive technologies like Pointer Control.
Minimize the need for large and repetitive gestures, as these can become tiresome and may be difficult depending on a person’s surroundings.

Accessibility

Accessibility

Vision

Hearing

Mobility

Speech

Cognitive

Platform considerations

visionOS

Resources

Developer documentation

Videos

Change log

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