Apple releases SF Symbols 7 beta with new animations, gradients

Alongside new design materials and resources for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe 26, Apple has also released the beta version of SF Symbols 7, a major update to its system iconography toolkit. The update includes hundreds of new icons, alongside new animation tools and transitions. Here’s everything new.

This year’s update brings a series of meaningful enhancements, including brand-new Draw animations, improved Magic Replace transitions, variable rendering support, and automatic gradients. All wrapped in Apple’s new design language across iOS 26 and its sibling platforms, including the new official shape for apps (shown below in gray, compared to the previous shape in black):

SF Symbols works seamlessly with Apple’s San Francisco font and has become an essential resource for designers and developers building consistent, native-looking apps for iOS, macOS, visionOS, and beyond. The beta includes:

Draw on and Draw Off

SF Symbols 7 adds two new animation presets, which animate symbols in and out of view. These animations take advantage of a symbol’s layered structure, allowing developers to choreograph motion across different parts of the icon with three playback styles: animating the whole symbol at once, offsetting layers for a more expressive effect, or revealing layers one by one.

Draw animations

To support the new animations, Apple has also introduced a tool that allows developers to place guide points and control stroke order and direction. Optional features like bidirectional motion, adaptive end caps, and draw attachments give further control, and this works across all weights and sizes from Ultralight to Black.

Variable Draw

Variable Draw builds on Variable Color and makes way for a more dynamic visual feedback, which Apple says is ideal to convey strength or progress. When symbols are annotated correctly, layers can animate in a fluid, data-driven way that gives designers more control over the message they’re conveying visually.

Enhanced Magic Replace

Apple’s tool for transitioning between related symbols got an upgrade that allows for more seamless transitions when two icons share an enclosure shape. This leads to more coherent and satisfying symbol transitions, especially in interfaces where quick visual feedback is important.

Gradient rendering

SF Symbols 7 now automatically generates linear gradients from a single source color, whether system-defined or custom. These gradients work across all rendering modes and bring a subtle lighting effect that adds depth and polish without sacrificing legibility.

Localized and platform-ready

This update also includes hundreds of new symbols and refinements to existing ones, aligned with Apple’s new universal design language. It now supports even more localized variants across scripts like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Devanagari, and other Indic systems. These are available across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26.

SF Symbols 7 beta requires macOS Ventura or later. To make the most out of the release, you might also want to watch the “What’s new in SF Symbols 7” WWDC25 session.

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