Could Apple’s Codename for iOS 19 Hint at a New Design?
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If the latest rumors are accurate, this could be the year Apple’s iPhone operating system gets a fresh coat of paint. Reports have been heating up over the last few weeks suggesting that iOS 19 is in for the biggest design overhaul we’ve seen since 2013, even if sources can’t quite agree on what form that will take.
The latest batch of reports may sound familiar, as several sources hinted at a visionOS-inspired redesign for iOS 18. While that didn’t happen, the prevailing theory is that those reports weren’t entirely off the mark—just a bit premature.
In March, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple was preparing a “dramatic software overhaul” for not only the iPhone but also the iPad and the Mac. At that time, Gurman didn’t go so far as to echo the reports that it would adopt the Vision Pro’s more glassy aesthetic; instead, he merely emphasized that Apple’s goal was to make its various software platforms “more consistent.”
“That includes updating the style of icons, menus, apps, windows and system buttons,” Gurman added. However, when Jon Prosser shared a purported look at the new iOS 19 Camera app with translucent menus, Gurman said those “aren’t representative of what we’ll see at WWDC.”
According to Gurman, it’s not that these were too far off the mark. Instead, he said they were “based on either very old builds or vague descriptions” and that we should “expect more from Apple in June.” Prosser had claimed to have seen the “real deal version” of iOS 19, but Gurman contested that. The tweaks Prosser showed were minor design tweaks rather than the “fundamental changes” that are supposedly coming to the entire look of iOS.
What’s In a (Code)Name?
Gurman doubled down on that notion in his Power On newsletter this week, pointing to Apple’s internal project codename for iOS 19 — Solarium — as implied evidence of what Apple has in mind:
The company has bigger changes in store for this new interface project, which is dubbed Solarium internally (named for a room with glass walls and ceiling that lets in natural light).
Mark Gurman
In the same post, he once again refutes the mock-ups that we’ve seen, saying that “they depict a visionOS-inspired look but with otherwise fairly small changes” but “aren’t representative of what Apple will show when it announces the new software at WWDC,” as Apple has much greater things in store. Gurman also theorizes these may have come “from an employee who doesn’t have access to the full scope of incoming modifications” but concedes that “the images could just be fake.”
While Solarium certainly sounds like a nod to a glassier aesthetic, it’s worth keeping in mind that Apple’s internal codenames are rarely that transparent.
Macworld’s Michael Simon dismissed the notion that Solarium has a hidden meaning, providing a sampling of previous codenames as a comparison. Last year’s codename for iOS 18, Crystal, inspired many to believe it would be the one to get the visionOS-inspired design. However, iOS 17 was codenamed “Dawn,” and iOS 12 was Peace. These names likely had no hidden meanings then, although people can always try to pick them apart and find connections, as Simon explains:
Now, if you really want to find meaning in those names, I suppose you can. Crystal could refer to the ability to customize icons with ease or as a reference to Apple Intelligence. Peace could refer to the new Do Not Disturb options introduced with iOS 12. Dawn could be related to using an iPhone in StandBy mode as an alarm clock.
Michael Simon
After all, the codename for iOS 7, which was the last time the iPhone operating system saw a massive redesign, was “Innsbruck,” a city in Austria that followed Apple’s tradition (at the time) of naming iOS versions after winter resort cities. “Being that iOS 7 introduced Apple’s first flat design,” Simon adds, “naming it after a city with nearly 70 named mountains could be a tongue-in-cheek nod to its new look. But like Solarium, it almost certainly wasn’t.”
I went through my notes and compiled a list of some of the other codenames that Apple reportedly used for previous iOS versions, including Alpine for iPhone OS 1.0, Little Bear for v1.1, and Big Bear for iPhone OS 2.0. After this came Kirkwood and Apex before Apple shifted into ski resort names with iOS 5 through iOS 10: Telluride, Sundance, Innsbruck, Okemo, Monarch, and Whitetail. iOS 11 was either Genoa or Tigris, followed by Peace, Yukon, Azul, Sky, Sydney, Dawn, and Crystal for iOS 12 through iOS 18. These were also just the codenames for the major “point zero” releases. Sub-point releases often had different codenames.
You have to really stretch your brain to imagine how any of those relate even loosely to the changes that each of those iOS releases introduced. Other than the run of ski resorts from 2012–2016, it’s hard to even figure out how most of these code names relate to each other. They may even be generated randomly or simply by someone opening a dictionary and pointing to a word.
While there’s no reason to doubt the reports that Apple is working on a new design for iOS 19, it would be a big surprise if this year is the first time in the history of iOS that one of Apple’s codenames has meant anything significant.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
