Starting Monday April 28, any new build or update submitted to App Store Connect must be compiled with Xcode 26 and the SDK matching the target platform: iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, or watchOS 26. Apple published the requirement on developer.apple.com in February 2026. The deadline is two days away.
What changes, and what doesn’t
The requirement applies to the SDK used at build time, not to the declared deployment target. An app compiled with the iOS 26 SDK can still declare iOS 17 or iOS 18 as its minimum supported version — users on older releases will continue to download and run it normally. Apps already published on the store are not affected: no forced removal, no mandatory update. The restriction only applies to new submissions and updates. If you have no release planned, nothing is required right now.
Developers distributing on watchOS have an additional requirement: Apple now mandates 64-bit compilation. watchOS apps still built for 32-bit cannot be submitted.
Liquid Glass by default
Recompiling with the iOS 26 SDK has an immediate visual effect on any app using native UIKit components. The Liquid Glass design system — introduced with iOS 26 — is applied by default to navigation bars, tab bars, toolbars, modal sheets, and other surfaces without any code changes.
There is no global opt-out flag. Controlling the behavior requires using Apple’s component-level APIs to customize or disable Liquid Glass on a per-element basis. For apps with layouts built on standard UIKit, it is worth running a local build with Xcode 26 before submitting: certain color and border combinations can produce unexpected results once the new rendering is active.
Apps using SwiftUI will see analogous behavior on system components. Apps with fully custom UI built on Metal or CALayer are not directly affected.
Build infrastructure
Xcode 26 requires macOS Sequoia 15.6 or later. If CI/CD build machines are running older macOS versions, the OS upgrade comes before the Xcode 26 install.
On GitHub Actions, the macos-26 (arm64) and macos-26-xlarge (Apple Silicon, large) runners have been available in general release with Xcode 26 preinstalled since February 2026. Workflows using macos-latest should be checked: the version the automatic selector resolves to can change, and an unexpected base image swap has downstream effects on the toolchain used in pipelines.
Bitrise, CircleCI, and other CI providers published macOS 26 images in the weeks prior. If you are using images pinned to earlier versions, plan the update before April 28.
Third-party SDKs and dependencies
Analytics, advertising, authentication, and crash reporting libraries must be compatible with Xcode 26 to avoid runtime warnings or linker errors. Most major vendors have shipped updates over the past few weeks.
A practical check: open the project in Xcode 26 locally, run a clean build, and look for unexpected linker errors or deprecation warnings before pushing the build to App Store Connect. Better to catch them locally than after waiting for validation feedback.
Screenshots and product pages
App Store screenshots reflect the interface of the published version. If recompilation introduces significant visual changes — for example in UIKit components that adopt Liquid Glass — the storefront images may no longer match the actual experience. Apple does not block submissions for outdated screenshots, but a visible mismatch between preview and app can affect conversion rates.
Updating screenshots is not required to submit, but worth doing in parallel if the visual changes are substantial.
What to expect after April 28
The April 28 deadline is also the first real pressure point for developers who had been deferring the Liquid Glass evaluation: from that date, every published update already requires a decision about how native components are handled. It is not a decision that can be pushed back indefinitely.
The next thing to watch: how App Store review behaves after the transition, particularly for apps containing third-party SDKs that are not yet fully compatible, or apps that show visual artifacts in screenshots. Apple can request metadata updates without blocking a submission, but the review track record for these edge cases is still forming.
