Read between the strokes with PencilKit

A Podkey summary of Read between the strokes with PencilKit, from WWDC 2026.This one is a pretty meaningful PencilKit update, especially if you care about handwriting, search, or building anything more ambitious than a simple sketch pad. Apple’s adding on-device handwriting recognition in 29 languages, better ways to search and index handwritten notes, cleaner stroke identity and selection hooks, and some surprisingly useful low-level tools for slicing, compositing, and converting stroke paths. A lot of this is aimed at developers, but the bigger picture is easy to feel: handwritten content is starting to behave a lot more like real, searchable, accessible text.Handwriting recognition comes into focusWhy searchable handwriting mattersA quiet accessibility winBeyond PKCanvasViewBetter control over strokes themselvesCompositing, slicing, and erasingA nice example: handwriting as feedback and instructionA quick reality check on performanceThis podcast was created with Podkey. Make your own at https://podkey.fm