The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #22
AI-powered SwiftUI, stronger app security, new SwiftUI design tools, and Xcode’s next steps
🆕 What’s New
Apple trained an LLM to teach itself good UI code in SwiftUI
Apple researchers introduced UICoder, a fine-tuned model that learned to generate SwiftUI code through an automated feedback loop. Starting with almost no SwiftUI data, it built nearly a million examples and now even beats GPT-4 in compilation success. I think this is a big step toward future dev tools that can design working UIs for us.
Xcode 26 beta 6 is out
As usual, the release brings a mix of fixes and known issues. If you’re testing with betas, it’s worth updating and checking release notes carefully to avoid surprises.
📚 Must Read
Why I'm Not Using Xcode 26's AI Chat Integration
Cihat Gündüz wrote a sharp piece on why he’s not using Xcode’s new AI yet, pointing out seven missing features that make tools like Claude Code and Cursor far more practical. He even laid out a five-release roadmap Apple could follow to catch up, from request queuing and git integration to full terminal access and Simulator-driven testing. I agree with him: Apple has the unique advantage of IDE integration, but unless they move quickly, more devs will build their workflows around competitors.
Securing iOS Apps: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques
Sergey put together a massive guide on iOS app security, covering everything from SSL pinning and Keychain usage to jailbreak detection, reverse engineering defenses, and advanced OWASP MASVS practices. What I liked is that he not only explains the theory but also shows real Swift examples and introduces his open-source SecurityKit library. A must-read if you want to go beyond the basics and harden your apps against real-world threats.
Corner concentricity in SwiftUI on iOS 26
Corner concentricity finally lands in SwiftUI with the new ConcentricRectangle API in iOS 26. It makes nested rounded shapes look visually consistent, whether in sheets, popovers, or custom cards. I think this is one of those subtle but powerful design tools that will make our UIs feel much more polished.
Building AI features using Foundation Models
This article shows how to build real AI features with Apple’s new Foundation Models framework. The API is surprisingly straightforward. You can spin up a LanguageModelSession, add instructions, and tune results with options like temperature and sampling. I like how Apple made it feel “just Swift” while still giving enough control to experiment and adapt responses for real app use cases.
🛠️ Toolbox
Mastering Icon Composer: Create Stunning App Icons
Stewart Lynch released a practical video on Icon Composer, Apple’s new built-in tool for creating app icons. He covers everything from groups, layers, and lighting to integrating your icons straight into Xcode projects. Even if you’re not a designer, this is a great way to give your apps polished, platform-ready icons without leaving your dev workflow.
🍬 One More Thing…
Swift Raw Identifiers
Swift 6.2 introduces raw identifiers, letting you wrap names in backticks to use otherwise invalid identifiers. This is especially handy in Swift Testing (no need to duplicate test descriptions) or enums with numeric cases like video frame rates. A small addition, but one that makes code more expressive and cleaner in the right places.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
🗓 Upcoming Conferences
August
30-31 — iPlayground (Taipei 🇹🇼)
September
2–4 — Swift Island (Texel 🇳🇱)
🆕 4–5 — /dev/world 2025 (Melbourne 🇦🇺)
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 🍏