# iOS HIG Design > Native iOS app design guidelines — an AI agent skill based on *Human Interface Guidelines* by Apple. Published 2026-02-19 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Design & UX · Free and MIT-licensed Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/ios-hig-design/ Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/ios-hig-design **Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/ios-hig-design --global` ## What is the iOS HIG Design skill? Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines run to hundreds of pages; the iOS HIG Design skill compresses the parts that change your code into something an agent can apply. It checks navigation choices, safe areas, Dynamic Type, SF Symbols, and haptics against platform convention, so a screen reads as native rather than as a web layout in a phone frame. ## Key concepts from Human Interface Guidelines your agent applies - **Navigation Patterns** — Use tab bars, navigation stacks, and modal presentations correctly for intuitive app flow. - **SF Symbols & Iconography** — Leverage Apple's symbol library for consistent, scalable icons that adapt to accessibility settings. - **Dynamic Type** — Support system font scaling so your app is accessible to users who adjust text size. - **Safe Areas & Layout** — Respect device safe areas, notches, and home indicators across all iPhone and iPad models. - **Haptics & Feedback** — Provide tactile feedback using the Taptic Engine for confirmations, selections, and errors. ## When to use iOS HIG Design — and when not to Reach for it when: - Testers keep saying your SwiftUI app feels like a website in a phone frame. - You are porting a web or Android design and every screen needs a native equivalent chosen. - Your layout breaks at the largest accessibility text size and you don’t know what should reflow. - You are about to submit to App Review and want the obvious convention breaks caught first. Reach for something else when: - You are designing for Android or the web — these conventions are Apple’s; use Refactoring UI for neutral polish. - The question is whether a control communicates its purpose at all — Design of Everyday Things sits under the HIG. - You want the small moments specced — Microinteractions defines trigger, rules, and feedback frame by frame. - You still need to prove the feature is worth building — Lean UX or Continuous Discovery come first. ## About Apple Pioneer of modern UI and mobile interaction design. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines represent decades of design research and platform evolution, maintained by the company that pioneered modern graphical user interfaces and mobile interaction design. ## Example prompts - Design a tab-based navigation structure for my fitness app using ios-hig-design skill _(App architecture)_ - Audit my SwiftUI views for HIG compliance using ios-hig-design skill _(Design review)_ - Create an onboarding flow that follows iOS conventions using ios-hig-design skill _(Onboarding)_ - Add proper haptic feedback to my button interactions using ios-hig-design skill _(Interaction design)_ ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I install the iOS HIG Design skill? Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/ios-hig-design --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The iOS HIG Design skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills. ### Which book is the iOS HIG Design skill based on? It packages *Human Interface Guidelines* by Apple — pioneer of modern UI and mobile interaction design. The skill distils the book's method into instructions your agent follows while it works, covering navigation patterns, sf symbols & iconography and dynamic type. It sits in the Design & UX part of the library. ### Does this replace reading the Human Interface Guidelines? No — it front-loads them. Apple revises the HIG continuously and adds material for each new OS and device, so the current page is always the authority on this year’s specifics. What the skill carries is the stable part: which navigation pattern fits which app structure, what Dynamic Type actually demands of your layout, when a sheet beats a push. Check Apple directly for anything version-specific. ### Is this about design, or does it write SwiftUI? The decisions are design decisions — hierarchy, navigation model, presentation style, feedback — but they land as code, because your agent is already in your SwiftUI or UIKit files. In practice you get a changed view with an explanation of which convention drove each change. It is opinionated about structure and layout, not about your architecture or state management. ### Will following the HIG get my app approved? Not on its own, and conflating the two is a common mistake. The HIG is design guidance; the App Store Review Guidelines are policy. Rejections usually come from the policy side — purchase flows, privacy disclosures, account deletion, data use — and this skill has nothing to say about those. It makes your app feel right to iOS users, which is a different test from passing review. ### Does it cover iPad, Mac, and visionOS too? It is centred on iPhone and iPad, where the conventions are most established and most often broken. Multi-column layouts, size classes, and adapting a phone design to a larger canvas are in scope. Catalyst, native macOS idioms, and spatial platforms are not — those have their own interaction models, and asking this skill to reason about them would get you confident guesses rather than conventions. ## Related - All Design & UX skills: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/design/ - Refactoring UI: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/refactoring-ui/ - UX Heuristics: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/ux-heuristics/ - Web Typography: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/web-typography/ - Design of Everyday Things: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/design-everyday-things/ - Top Design: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/top-design/ - Lean UX: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/lean-ux/ - Microinteractions: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/microinteractions/ - Steve Jobs Design Review: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/steve-jobs-design-review/