The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #21
Final polish in iOS 26 beta 6, reusable SwiftUI toolbars, async/await migration, EventKit permissions, Xcode 26 AI tools, and SF Symbols 7 animations
🆕 What’s New
Everything New in iOS 26 Beta 6
iOS 26 beta 6 brings the final polish before September’s launch. Refined Liquid Glass effects, faster app animations, and a redesigned Preview app stand out this week.
📚 Must Read
How to create a custom reusable toolbar in SwiftUI
Suppose you’re tired of duplicating toolbar code across multiple SwiftUI screens. In that case, this guide demonstrates how to create a fully reusable toolbar component using ToolbarContent, a custom ViewModifier, and a clean API via a view extension. It’s a great approach that keeps your navigation bars consistent while making your codebase easier to maintain.
Async await in Swift explained with code examples
If you’ve been avoiding async/await because it felt too big a refactor, this deep dive shows why it’s worth adopting now. Antoine walks through how async/await improves readability over completion closures, explains common pitfalls like calling async code from sync contexts, and breaks down Xcode’s built-in refactor tools for progressive migration. A solid read if you want to clean up your concurrency code before fully moving to Swift 6.
Getting access to the user’s calendar
If your app needs to work with calendar events or reminders, this guide shows how to handle it securely using EventKit. It covers permission keys, requesting different access levels, tracking authorization status, and integrating a permissions view model into SwiftUI. Good starting point for adding calendar and reminders support!
🛠️ Toolbox
Apple Intelligence in Xcode 26
This video by Stewart Lynch takes you inside Xcode 26’s new AI-powered coding tools unlocked with macOS 26. From inline code explanations and smart refactorings to generating full SwiftUI apps from sketches using ChatGPT, it shows both the potential and the limits of Apple Intelligence in real development workflows. A must-watch if you’re curious how AI could fit into your day-to-day coding.
🍬 One More Thing…
SF Symbols 7 brings fresh animation APIs
You can now draw symbols stroke-by-stroke, animate progress directly on a symbol, smoothly transition between related icons with Magic Replace, and add depth with gradient rendering. A small update with big visual impact for your UI.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
🗓 Upcoming Conferences
August
30-31 — iPlayground (Taipei 🇹🇼)
September
2–4 — Swift Island (Texel 🇳🇱)
18-19 — NS Spain 2025 (Logroño 🇪🇸)
24–26 — FlutterCon Europe (Berlin 🇩🇪)
26-27 — Swift Bharat 2025 (Bengaluru 🇮🇳)
29–30 — Swift Connection (Paris 🇫🇷)
October
2–3 — ServerSide.swift (London 🇬🇧)
6–8 — SwiftLeeds (Leeds 🇬🇧)
24 — DevFest.cz (Prague 🇨🇿)
30–31 — Pragma Conference (Bologna 🇮🇹)
November
👋 That’s it for this week
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Until next Friday — keep shipping 🍏