Pugpig Bolt uses platform-provided UI elements where relevant across the product. This has long been our approach and offers us many benefits, such as consistency across devices, reliability and stability, as well as familiarity for users.

One such element is the tab bar, and iPadOS 18 has introduced changes to this, giving it a new design and relocating it to the top of the screen. This used to reside at the bottom of the screen, as it still does on iPhone. Here are the key changes summarised.

1. The tab bar is now at the very top of the screen, above any other UI elements except for the device's status bar
2. It now only consists of the tab name, not icons
3. On smaller iPads and/or with longer tab names, the tab bar becomes horizontally scrollable
4. There are limited theming capabilities
5. This is not a configuration choice, it will be the same for all Bolt apps on devices running Bolt iOS 4.5 or above and iPadOS 18 or above

Here's what it looks like

You'll likely have seen this on many other apps already, including most or all of iPadOS's stock apps. This also means your iPad users are likely to already be somewhat familiar with it depending on which other apps they use.

As mentioned, these changes do come with certain restrictions around the design and behaviour of the tab bar, which we've broken down below.

Theme

Theming of the tab bar is limited to the text colour of the selected tab, also known as the tint colour. The pill indicating the selected tab is always white, and the background is always light grey

Dark mode

iPadOS currently doesn't support separate theming between light and dark mode. No matter what your tint colour (see above) is, it will be white text on a light grey pill over a darker grey background in dark mode. Screenshot of this below.

Known issues

• With certain toolbar logo configuration options the first page of a PDF edition can jump up slightly when opened. This is an open issue with Apple which we're waiting for them to address, alongside other general transitioning glitches introduced in iPadOS and iOS 18. We're investigating mitigating workarounds for this in the interim.
• When rotating the app with the paywall displayed, the paywall resizes itself smaller and then larger again.
• When configured to do so the title of a tab is not displayed in the toolbar as it is on mobile. This is possibly an intentional choice by Apple as the new location of the tab bar would result in the same wording (the tab title) being displayed very close together. This is not true for hidden tabs, and the title there is displayed as expected.
• There are several VoiceOver accessibility bugs relating to the new tab bar, these have been raised with Apple and occur system-wide, not only in Bolt apps.
• There are visual issues when the system font size is increased. This has been raised with Apple and occurs system-wide, not only in Bolt apps.
• The configuration which allows the tab-bar to appear in the article/content view does not apply to iPadOS, as the tab bar is always visible.