We’re pleased to announce the arrival of Iconfactory Tapestry on iOS 26 with stunning support for Liquid Glass, visual improvements up and down the timeline, and a new native app for macOS.
Tapestry looks great in Liquid Glass
Tapestry’s user interface has been completely overhauled for iOS 26 and Liquid Glass and the results are pretty amazing. Controls and Quicklinks now float over the timeline, primary navigation and search UI have been refined, and more.
Your timeline is looking even better
Tapestry 1.3 also sports a host of timeline improvements, including the ability to adjust font sizes within the app. Use Settings > Appearance > Text Size inside of Tapestry instead of the system settings.
There’s also initial support for Mastodon quoted posts, an improved design for Mastodon polls, and the Bluesky List connector now lets you exclude reposts and replies.
Native Tapestry for macOS
Tapestry on the Mac no longer emulates an iPad and is now a full-fledged native app. While still a work-in-progress, Tapestry is much improved, including initial keyboard support, font size control, and more.
Tools, too!
We’ve also improved the tools used to build Tapestry’s connectors. Check out the updated API documentation or download a new version of the Tapestry Loom development tool.
Not all app updates are created equal. Some are big, flashy affairs that bring new features and complete visual overhauls. Then there are the cryptic “Bug fixes and improvements” that make us cringe. Today’s Linea release falls somewhere in-between.
Linea Sketch 4.3.6 won’t fundamentally change the way you work, but it will let you do that work better, faster and more securely. If you’re looking for Liquid Glass, we’re still trying to figure out how Apple’s new UI framework fits into the app – we certainly don’t want it on the canvas while you’re drawing.
We’ve spent months overhauling Linea’s iCloud framework to bring it up to date with changes Apple has made over the years and to handle large libraries much more efficiently. Linea launches more quickly to get you up and running as fast as possible, whether you have a dozen sketches or hundreds. You’ll get feedback when sketches are syncing, and the app won’t freeze when handling large numbers of sketches and projects.
Despite these improvements, we would be remiss if we didn’t remind you to regularly back up your work. Even with safeguards in place, iCloud has been known to misbehave, which can lead to disaster. If you’ve never manually backed up your Linea Sketch library, now’s a great time to do it. Backing up via the Mac is a snap but it can also be done via the Files App. Be sure to follow our step-by-step guide to keeping your creative work safe and sound.
In addition to iCloud improvements, Linea now also sports a new app icon that adapts for light, dark, and tinted mode across all its color themes. Check out the complete version history for more info on the 4.3.6 update.
And if you’re new to Linea Sketch, get started today with a FREE download.
October is just around the corner and with it comes our favorite annual, creative tradition – Inktober. Long time visitors know this is when artists answer the call to grab their pens, brushes and Apple Pencils and craft drawings each day during the month of October. Inktober is the perfect opportunity to challenge yourself creatively and even if you’ve never drawn a lick in your life, you can still have fun, one spooky doodle at a time.
This year we’re doing something a little different. First, we’re offering our handy, free templates for Linea Sketch much earlier than usual so you can get a big head start on the event and not feel so pressured. Last year we personally started drawing a week early and found it really helped us not stress out about the daily deadlines. Given this, we wanted to get the templates into your hands as soon as inhumanly possible.
This year we’re offering a new mini template (right) that gives you twelve days on a single Linea sheet. They’re quicker to sketch and easier to keep organized.
Second, in addition to the usual templates which have traditionally included 4 drawings on a single Linea page, we’re also making a new mini-template available for download. These include 12 days of drawings on a full sheet which are much easier to quickly sketch and keep organized. Download the 2025 Inktober templates here.
As they are every year, Linea’s Inktober 2024 templates are completely free and easy to set up. Be sure to check out our short video tutorial on how to get the templates into Linea Sketch for the iPad, and you’ll be on your artistic way in no time.
Don’t forget to tag your posts with #LineaSketch on social media! We love sharing our favorite drawings on Linea’s Instagram throughout October, so it’s the perfect chance to shine. Get your screen protectors ready, charge up those Apple Pencils, and prepare to dive into a month of creativity—October will be haunting us before you know it!
Tot, your tiny text companion, is still tiny. But now, it’s even more mighty.
That’s because we’ve just released Tot 2, with tons of great improvements to let you collect text on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
Text Dividers
Bring order to your text chaos with text dividers. With four styles to choose from in two different weights, you can divide up your text however suits you best. They’re great for separating notes in a dot dedicated to a project.
Custom Smart Bullets
Spice up your useful-yet-boring to-do lists with Tot’s new Smart Bullets. Tot 2 lets you check off your to-do items using an array of customizable symbols or even emoji. Create up to eight custom bullet pairs and assign them to Quick Key slots for instant access when creating to-do lists. Getting your tasks done has never been more fun!
Choose any symbol or emoji you want to represent a to-do task’s two states: Start (uncompleted) and Finish (completed). Then tap the bullet to toggle its state.
Automatic Indents
Tot will automatically indent your bullets and Smart Bullets, and handy keyboard shortcuts will make it easy to indent any other text you’d like. It’s great for writing in Markdown, thinking through some code, or just tidying things up.
And more!
Tot 2 features a ton of other improvements to make your text-based life even better, from automatic iOS backups which safeguard your content to adaptive Mac Dock icons, to an improved keyboard and status bar on iOS.
Tot 2 is available today for iOS, macOS and watchOS. The app is free to download and try on macOS and iOS with in-app paid premium features. Head on over to tot.rocks to learn more and download the latest version. Enjoy!
While the Iconfactory is hard at work on Tapestry, Linea Sketch, Wallaroo, and Tot, we also find ourselves at a crossroads: we have too many apps and not enough time to keep them all up-to-date.
Our apps deserve more love than we can currently give. We’re looking to find new homes for our side products – many of which have storied histories and loads of happy & loyal customers.
For example, our game Frenzic spent several years as an Apple Arcade exclusive with many engaged players, but alas we just do not have the resources to keep it and other apps updated and growing – but maybe you do!
If you, or someone you know, is interested in acquiring one or more of our apps (intellectual property, source code, etc), we hope you’ll get in touch. We’re open to all serious offers, thanks.
Our hand-crafted Pixel Portrait add-on was so popular during our Tapestry Kickstarter that we’ve decided to bring them back – now anyone can get their own retro portrait created. These hand-crafted graphics are made with love by actual human beings, no AI involved. They’re perfect for your online avatar, printing and framing, or anything else you can think of.
If you missed out during the Kickstarter, now’s the time to swing into action. There are a limited number of slots available, so head on over to the Pixel Portrait page and order yours today.
Apple’s new Liquid Glass design that was announced at WWDC25 is more than just a fresh coat of paint—it’s a signal. One that points simultaneously to the future of digital interfaces and to the past. We’re calling it neo-retro.
Liquid Glass appears new and futuristic, yet somehow familiar—after all, the idea of translucent interface elements animating over glassy surfaces has been around since before Minority Report hit theaters in 2002. But Apple has brought the concept into the present day and made it their own. The layers, translucency, and animations feel like a natural evolution of VisionOS—clean, immersive, and spatially aware.
But just like the leap from Classic Mac OS 9 to Aqua over 25 years ago, the visual appeal doesn’t come without a cost. Liquid Glass introduces new challenges across accessibility, usability, and branding—and the design implications are real.
Accessibility
Layering text and translucent UI elements on vibrant backgrounds can wreak havoc with contrast and readability. We’ve already seen examples from Apple’s keynote where app icons or labels feel lost in the visual noise. No doubt Apple will adjust contrast and readability as iOS 26 moves through the beta process but it’s good to be conscious of the issues even now.
Designers will need to rely on their experience—layering, shadowing, and possibly adding custom modes—to ensure accessibility doesn’t take a back seat to aesthetics. Care will also need to be taken when features like transparency and contrast are changed at the system level: your design needs to hold up with a lot of different human capabilities.
Usability
Liquid Glass isn’t just a visual change—it’s a spatial one. Apple’s UI elements now float, breathe, and demand more space. The new Maps search bar is elegant, but it creates layout challenges, especially on smaller screens.
More padding around elements means less screen real estate which leads to more scrolling, rethinking hierarchy, and hiding content that used to fit just fine.
Branding
Here’s the existential one: In a system where everything looks cohesive and monochrome, how do you and your app stand out?
Apple’s design language is intentionally immersive and unified. That’s great for the user—but tough for brands that want to maintain a distinct identity. Your app might now live in an ecosystem that feels more like Apple and less like you.
This makes UX and feature decisions even more important. The challenge becomes: do you integrate your brand into Liquid Glass—or integrate Liquid Glass into your brand? How will you strike the right balance?
The Road Ahead: We’ve Been Here Before
This isn’t our first design rodeo. We’ve helped clients (and updated our own apps) through every major Apple design transition. From the skeuomorphism of the original macOS Aqua and iPhone iOS 1.0 to the familiar flat aesthetic of iOS 7 and Android Material Design. The challenge of designing for iOS 26’s Liquid Glass are many but we’re confident in our ability to not only navigate this new landscape but to excel and push boundaries like never before.
Each sea change comes with hype, uncertainty, and a learning curve. But we don’t just design delightful user experiences—we guide our clients through the strategic side of design transitions. Whether you’re refreshing an existing app or building something new, we have the experience and expertise to help you:
Maintain usability while adopting a new visual language
Ensure accessibility in complex UI environments
Rethink branding within Apple’s unified system
Navigate cross-platform realities without losing your mind (or your users)
Change is exciting. Change is hard. Let’s make it work.
Our bread and butter here at the Iconfactory may be icon and UI design, but we love any kind of project where we can put pencil to paper (or to pixels, as the case may be). Creating original wallpapers for Wallaroo and our Patreon is one way we get to free ourselves from the usual UI-shaped box.
Another is through projects like the one sent our way by James Dempsey.
Every year since 2012 James Dempsey and the Breakpoints put on a benefit concert the week of Apple’s WWDC. For this year’s concert, James asked if we would create a poster for the show in the style of a vintage WPA National Park poster, to be used for promotion of all types, both in digital and physically printed formats.
I love National Parks posters, and have several of them framed in my office, so I was excited about this project right from the start. James had a rough sketch and a lot of great ideas for the direction of the poster, and together we were able to bring it to life, starting with a more refined sketch and working our way to a finished piece with lots of fun details.
You can see my initial sketch and the finished poster below. Be sure to check out the concert website at https://livenearwwdc.com/. And if you need anything drawn or designed for your project – icons, banners, posters, or whatever – let us know!
We’re back with another major Tapestry update chock full of features and improvements that you are sure to love. There’s a ton of new, exciting things in this release including some that have been requested since the app’s launch – so let’s get straight to it!
Likes, boosts, and bookmarks. Oh my!
That’s right, now you can perform specific actions such as liking, reblogging, favoriting, boosting, and bookmarking directly from the Tapestry timeline. All your favorite social media feeds are supported including Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr, and Micro.blog.
Developers can also build actions into their own third party connectors, making them even more powerful than before. Being able to favorite posts, quickly reblog content from your favorite authors and natively bookmark items for future reference is a welcome addition to Tapestry. Be sure to check out our knowledge base for more info about connector actions.
New ways to customize your feeds
Fulfilling a long-time user request, individual feeds can now be set to display in expanded, collapsed, or mini mode, making the timeline quicker to scan. You can also turn the service name off for individual feeds, something we’ve now done by default on RSS/JSON feeds – say goodbye to “Blog”!
Set individual feeds to display in expanded, collapsed or mini mode style.
Configuring custom timelines now also includes the option to “exclude feeds.” This makes it easier than ever to setup a timeline that has almost all your feeds but omits the ones you choose. This is perfect for when you follow a particularly busy hashtag, but don’t want all those posts to appear in a given timeline.
Tapestry’s new sound effects are music to our ears
Enjoy Tapestry’s new audio cues that help you navigate and take action. Tapestry plays unique audio alerts after refreshing the timeline, when using the new social media actions, or expanding and collapsing items.
Tapestry’s sounds are a joy to use and were crafted by Andre Louis, the creator of Twitterrific’s sound effects. We’re pleased to feature Andre’s excellent work once again, but if you prefer silence, you can easily turn sound effects off in Settings > Behavior.
There’s so much more!
Other notable goodies include the ability to open all links in Reader Mode, and new long-press menus let you take a closer look at user avatars and share links. There are multiple improvements to VoiceOver, a ton of fun new custom app icons, and so much more. We’ve also enabled the ability to run Tapestry on Apple Vision Pro: it’s experimental and unsupported but will be a welcome change for customers with the new headset.
Be sure to check out the full version history to get the complete bird’s eye view. Enjoy!
The days are getting longer and everyone’s sleeves are getting shorter, so it’s the perfect time for some new Iconfactory t-shirt designs!
We’ve got a couple new Tapestry designs available that are sure to make you the envy of all your developer friends at Apple’s upcoming WWDC: One for Loom, our tool for creating third-party Tapestry connectors, and one featuring Cosmo the Capybara, Tapestry’s unofficial mascot. We’ve also added a snazzy, new Iconfactory logo design.
Finally, be sure to check out the special Tapestry enamel pins. These dual pin packs are the same ones our Kickstarter backers received and are extremely limited. Once they’re gone, they’re gone so go get them while you can!
Head on over to our Cotton Bureau page and buy some goodies for yourself or for a friend!