WWDC’26 Viewing Guide

I've been following WWDC since 2011* and over the years I've developed my own process for watching sessions.

Over the past 15 years, I've gone through all the stages from denial (I missed all the videos, for example, in 2014, when I couldn't accept Swift's appearance), to bargaining ("I still CAN watch all of them!") and finally accepting and creating my own approach to watching WWDC.

So here's my current approach:

1. I try to watch Keynote and Platforms State of the Union at the time of their live broadcast or in the early days.
2. When all the sessions become available, I sit down and go through all the titles and descriptions and choose what I will watch.
3. All sessions fall into 4 categories:
   • Essential is a must watch and should never be missed
   • Nice To Watch is something interesting to me personally and may be applicable to what I work with
   • Only If I Have Time is for optional sessions that interested me, but if I skip them, then nothing terrible will happen
   • Everything else

Thus, I clearly identify a fairly small set of sessions that I definitely need to watch, usually it's about 10 sessions and I don't feel any FOMO or pressure that there is so much new and how and when to watch it all.

Most of the time, it takes me all summer to slowly watch everything from Essential, a few (or all, it depends) Nice To Watch, and sometimes a couple, and sometimes nothing at all from Only If I Have Time.

An important rule for me is to watch Essential first. Then I can do whatever I want.

Another personal kink of mine is to watch the sessions in the order of their numbering. For example, in my Essential category, the very first video is 227. Create UI prototypes using agents in Xcode, and then 258. What’s new in Xcode 27 and so on.

So, here is my personal list of WWDC’26 sessions, divided into these categories:

1. Essential

   • Create UI prototypes using agents in Xcode
   • What’s new in Xcode 27
   • Xcode, agents and you
   • Get the most out of Device Hub
   • What’s new in Swift
   • What’s new in SwiftUI
   • Modernize your UIKit app
   • Meet the Evaluations framework
   • Meet Core AI

2. Nice to watch

   • Translate your app using agents in Xcode
   • Run local agentic AI on the Mac using MLX
   • Profile, fix and verify: Improve app responsiveness with Instruments
   • Code-along: Build powerful drag and drop in SwiftUI
   • What’s new in SwiftData
   • Dive into lazy stacks and scrolling with SwiftUI
   • Compose advanced graphics effects with SwiftUI
   • Integrate on-device AI models into your app using Core AI
   • Discover new capabilities in the App intents framework

3. Only if I have time

   • What’s new in the Foundation Models framework
   • Build agentic app experiences with the Foundation Models framework
   • Debug and profile agentic app experiences with Instruments
   • Principles of great design
   • Build, deliver, and automate with Xcode Cloud
   • Build a responsive camera app that launches quickly
   • Bring an LLM provider to the Foundation Models framework

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, and for you it may be different depending on what technologies you work with or what interests you have. But if you feel lost every year (like I was before), then you can use this guide to collect your own, using the principles laid down in this post.

Have a nice dub-dub-DC :)

*it was quite a significant conference that year: it was the last WWDC at which Steve Jobs spoke, and it was the year that ARC was introduced