iPad - Main menu in Liquid Glass UI on iPad (iPadOS 27) is located at the top and small

@war-in

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Version Number: 9.5.14-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: N/A - new feature, doesn't exist in prod
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: Exp
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): fischer9966+053122@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Exploratory - Significant User Experience Deterioration
Device used: iPad 9th Gen 10" / iPadOS 27.0.1
App Component: Other

Action Performed:

Open Expensify App on iPad with iPadOS 27
Login with any account
Check what the main menu looks like and where it is located

Expected Result:

The main menu is located at the bottom of the screen and is of a standard size for Liquid Glass UI

Actual Result:

The main menu is located at the top of the screen and is small in size which differs from the Liquid Glass UI standards.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Screenshots/Videos

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Applause Internal Information
Exported by: Svetlana Lazutkina
Bug ID: 7290614

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @war-in

While Applause doesn't embed attachments for this bug, here are the links for quick view:
https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/c3a1322288c1e7088dae42e5471446430a36e5f9e17a4286227888c9588e925f

https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/f0d6af3ff48c53929adcc9aa3e885de434d0a21b039a6b30492acf0f2e3f327a

@stitesExpensify

Triggered auto assignment to @stitesExpensify (DeployBlockerCash), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/9980/ for more details.

💬 A slack conversation has been started in #expensify-open-source

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
Fix the issue yourself.

Deploy Blocker Analysis

Causing PR: Add liquid glass bottom tab bar to iOS, Android and mWeb, which is not part of 9.5.14. It merged on 2026-10-15. It shipped in Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2026-10-16, and that release went to production today. So this bug should already reproduce on production (9.5.13-6) on iPadOS 26+. The issue's "N/A - new feature" note is out of date.

Recommendation: demote and fix forward. Don't revert anything. No PR in the current Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2026-10-19 changes where the tab bar sits. Every tab still works; the bar is only small and its labels are cut off. Confirm the bug reproduces on production 9.5.13-6, then remove DeployBlockerCash.

Confidence: High.

Root cause

On iPadOS 18 and later, a UITabBarController in a regular-width layout draws a small floating tab bar at the top. This is the default UIKit behavior.
The App sets tabBarControllerMode: 'tabBar'. That setting only turns off the sidebar. It doesn't move the bar to the bottom. Moving it needs a compact horizontalSizeClass trait override. Neither react-native-screens 4.28.0 nor the App's patches set one.
On native, useResponsiveLayout hardcodes isSmallScreenWidth = true. As a result, NativeTabLayout always uses the native bar on iPad.
Each tab label is drawn into its icon image, which is sized for a phone's bottom bar. The compact top bar shrinks those images, so the labels get cut off ("ccour", "Spend'" in the screenshots).

Ruled out: Fix bottom tab appears on non-root paths after killing and relaunching the app is the only 9.5.14 PR that touches this navigator. It only controls whether the bar is visible, not where it sits.

Fix options

Patch react-native-screens to set traitOverrides.horizontalSizeClass = .compact on the tab bar controller, and set it back to regular on the child view controllers.
Or use the JS tab bar instead of the native one on iPad.
With either option, size the labels from the real bar width, or stop drawing labels into the icons in regular width.

Possible owners: sumo-slonik (PR author), plus grgia and ZhenjaHorbach (reviewers). Related follow-up: [Liquid Glass Follow Up] Fix native tab bar issues when the Insights beta is on.

I didn't test this, because iPadOS 27 can't be reproduced on web.

Next Steps: Reply with @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis.

@ZhenjaHorbach

@ZhenjaHorbach Still overdue 6 days?! Let's take care of this!

@ZhenjaHorbach

@ZhenjaHorbach Now this issue is 8 days overdue. Are you sure this should be a Daily? Feel free to change it!

@shawnborton

@shawnborton I experimented with our options and here is what I found

The perfect solution (in my opinion). Icons and titles are both present in the bar. Also, RBR and GBR work as expected
Downside: it requires a custom react-native-screens patch that most likely won't be accepted upstream

Text-only tabs. It doesn't require any custom code and can be achieved today with one small PR
Downsides: There are no badges, and icons are gone

Text-only tabs with native indicators.
Downsides: There are badges, but they can only be red

Probably the most controversial, but truly native.
Downsides: It requires react-native-screens upgrade and completely changes how the app looks on iPads 😅
Disclaimer: this is the raw POC; the sidebar can be styled properly and look more like

apple music

Let me know what you think and which direction feels the best for you 🙏

@chuckdries

Hmm I would be curious what @chuckdries thinks here. I think the idea was that we wanted to support our normal wide app styles, at which point we can just not need any kind of tabs for landscape layouts. And we should consider the upcoming flat nav changes too.

Then we only really need to worry about portrait mode, at which case I would think we could just use similar styles that native mobile uses?

As for styles though, I would expect the tabs to look more like this:

@war-in

@war-in @ZhenjaHorbach this issue was created 2 weeks ago. Are we close to a solution? Let's make sure we're treating this as a top priority. Don't hesitate to create a thread in #expensify-open-source to align faster in real time. Thanks!

I am not sure we want to go full native on the nav sidebar. I think liquid glass for the tab buttons is a nice aesthetic touch that makes it feel more at home on the platform, but I feel like using the native view for the sidebar itself has diminishing returns. I'd like to minimize how much the code has to diverge versus web and android, especially since it seems like we might have big sidebar changes coming down the pipe.

@ZhenjaHorbach

@ZhenjaHorbach 12 days overdue now... This issue's end is nigh!

@ZhenjaHorbach

@ZhenjaHorbach 12 days overdue. Walking. Toward. The. Light...

@war-in

I've reassigned the K2 ownership star so @war-in's comments reset the overdue timer. I'm going to toggle the reviewing label to reset it manually just this once

Ok, so let's do minimal changes so the app looks good on ipad and we can revisit those ideas when flat nav is there!

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iPad - Main menu in Liquid Glass UI on iPad (iPadOS 27) is located at the top and small #104423

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iPad - Main menu in Liquid Glass UI on iPad (iPadOS 27) is located at the top and small #104423

Description

Action Performed:

Expected Result:

Actual Result:

Workaround:

Platforms:

Screenshots/Videos

Activity

applause-bot commented on Oct 19, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Oct 19, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Oct 19, 2026

github-actions commented on Oct 19, 2026

MelvinBot commented on Oct 19, 2026

Deploy Blocker Analysis

9 remaining items

melvin-bot commented on Oct 27, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Oct 29, 2026

war-in commented on Nov 2, 2026

shawnborton commented on Nov 2, 2026

shawnborton commented on Nov 2, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Nov 2, 2026

chuckdries commented on Nov 2, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Nov 2, 2026

melvin-bot commented on Nov 3, 2026

chuckdries commented on Nov 3, 2026

war-in commented on Nov 5, 2026

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