Apple has opened a beta of Pass Designer, a Mac app that lets businesses design Apple Wallet passes and preview them before they reach customers. It handles store cards, event tickets, and boarding passes, and it shows how each pass will look on iPhone and Apple Watch while you build it.
Apple describes the app on its Pass Designer page as a tool for anyone making passes, from a local fitness center or a small music venue to a global airline or a national coffee chain. The beta needs macOS 27 or later, and Apple has published a guide to creating a pass in Pass Designer for developers.
Getting into the beta takes a few steps:
- Run macOS 27 or later on the Mac.
- Sign in to the download page with an Apple Account.
- Complete the free registration and accept the Apple Developer Agreement if prompted.
Pass Designer previews each pass with the same rendering iPhone and Apple Watch use
Designers can start from templates supplied by Apple or from their own. Logos, backgrounds, and strip images can be made in any design tool and then brought into Pass Designer to finish the pass.
The preview updates in real time as you edit, and it uses the same rendering as iOS and watchOS. What shows up in Pass Designer is what a customer sees in Apple Wallet on their iPhone or Apple Watch.
Pass colors can be changed for the background, foreground, and labels. Every pass type has its own standard fields, and the content of each field can be edited directly in the app. The app checks the pass as you work and flags missing required key values and unexpected definitions.
Designs can use the newest Apple Wallet features, and passes can also be built to stay backward compatible with older versions. The richer pass design that arrived with iOS 27 is covered in our Apple Wallet in iOS 27 breakdown.
Semantic tags connect boarding passes and event tickets to Siri, Calendar, and Maps
Boarding passes and event tickets can carry semantic tags, which add structured data such as event dates, venue locations, and flight details. The system reads that data to power Siri Suggestions, Calendar integration, and Maps directions.
Pass Designer lets you edit those tags in its interface. A semantic pass and a non-semantic pass can be viewed side by side, so you can see what the tags change.
The app can also generate a backward-compatible pass structure from the semantic data. That version does not need semantic tags, so the pass still works on devices where they are not supported.
