Metal and Skins
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Codename One ships a complete Metal rendering backend for iOS (replacing deprecated OpenGL ES 2), a browser-based Skin Designer that retires the old skin downloader, and several smaller improvements. The Metal backend offers better performance, lower battery use, crisper text via CoreText, and GPU-rendered gradients; it can be enabled with `ios.metal=true` and will become the default within two weeks. The new Skin Designer runs entirely in the browser, lets developers generate `.skin` files for any device without installing anything, and ends the need for Codename One to maintain a growing catalog of device skins. Other changes include an iOS Reminders-style Return-as-Done flag for multi-line TextArea, status-bar tap diagnostics, a simulator Dark/Light mode toggle, and a warning that Android 16 will ignore orientation locks on large-screen devices. The post also openly addresses two recent quality incidents — a sticky-header transition bug and a SIMD stack-allocation crash on large images — explaining the testing gaps and fixes.
Table of contents
How we think about qualityMetal is hereThe end of the skin downloaderiOS multi-line TextArea: Return as DoneDiagnostics for status-bar tap scroll-to-topSimulator: Dark / Light mode toggleHeads-up: weekend backend maintenanceWarning: Android 16 will effectively disallow locking orientationWhy the version jumped to 7.0.242Wrapping upSort: