When using `navigationBar.prefersLargeTitles=true`, scrolling doesn't always shrink the title

[ibrahima]

Hi! I was trying to make our app feel more "native", and I found that one thing that many built-in apps do is this to set navigationBar.prefersLargeTitles=true, which results in a nice big title when at the top of the content, which then shrinks into the top navbar area when you scroll down. However, I found that when I enable this on Hotwire Native iOS, the shrinking part is not consistent. It will sometimes shrink, sometimes it won't, and sometimes it starts working after navigation, and sometimes that doesn't help either. Is this perhaps a bug in Hotwire Native iOS? Is there any way to make this more reliable? Is anyone else using this option successfully? Thanks!

Here's the code I changed to enable large titles.

main...ibrahima:hotwire-native-ios:test-large-titles

Here's an example of the reminders app (from the simulator)

Simulator.Screen.Recording.-.iPhone.16.Pro.-.2025-09-04.at.14.55.59.mp4

Here's the demo app with prefersLargeTitles=true. You'll see that on some screens, scrolling down shrinks the title, but other times, it doesn't.

Simulator.Screen.Recording.-.iPhone.16.Pro.-.2025-09-04.at.15.07.22.mp4

Actually, I realize that even the native screen in the demo app uses this setting.

[joemasilotti]

What's even weirder, is that if you background and then resume the app it "fixes" the current page! This is either a WKWebView bug or something wrong with how we are attaching the web view to the screen.

[ibrahima]

Yeah, I've thrown it at a bunch of LLMs and they seem to think it has to do with the latter, but none have fixed it yet :(. I think forcing a re-layout fixes it somehow, and/or it may be related to the relative ordering of different rendering events, but I don't have anything conclusive.

[Jacoblab1]

Also running into this bug - on our end when testing (iOS 26) the title never shrinks at all, it just stays stuck as a large title.

[joemasilotti]

I'm going to close this out as it feels like a bug with WKWebView + iOS 26 and not related to Hotwire Native.

[ibrahima]

Hmm well I started seeing it on iOS 18 but yeah it may just be a webview bug

[ibrahima]

Ah looks like maybe #199 fixes this issue? That would be awesome if so! Looks like it may need additional testing?