The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #47
Swift Student Challenge is open, the four ways developers use AI, SwiftData gets model inheritance, and a hands-on look at agentic Xcode
🆕 What’s New
Swift Student Challenge submissions are now open
Apple just opened submissions for this year’s Swift Student Challenge. Students from anywhere in the world can submit their app playgrounds until February 28. No prior experience needed, it’s free, and you just need a Mac or iPad with Xcode or Swift Playgrounds. I really think this is one of the best opportunities for students getting into iOS. Even if you don’t win, the experience of building and submitting something real is super valuable. And if you do win, that’s an achievement that stays on your resume forever. If you know any students interested in development, definitely share this with them.
Updated App Review Guidelines now available
Apple updated the App Review Guidelines. The main change: apps with random or anonymous chat features now fall under the 1.2 User-Generated Content guideline.
📚 Must Read
How to use SwiftUI Coordinators to communicate with UIKit
Natascha Fadeeva wrote a clean walkthrough on using coordinators in SwiftUI. If you ever needed to wrap a UIKit view controller and pass data back to SwiftUI, this is exactly that. The example uses DataScannerViewController for QR code scanning, which still doesn’t have a native SwiftUI version. The article explains why you need a coordinator in the first place (UIKit delegates need a class, SwiftUI views are structs) and walks through the whole setup step by step. I actually used a similar approach on my own project and wrote about it here.
It breaks down four approaches to working with AI: traditional coding, context engineering, vibe engineering, and vibe coding. Turns out most of us are somewhere in the middle and didn't even have a name for it. The part about context engineering is probably the most useful. You prepare detailed instructions and coding specs for the AI, review each step, and build features incrementally. It's slower but way more reliable for production code.
And one thing I really agree with: no matter how much you trust AI with code generation, always review security yourself. Authentication flows, API keys, data handling, permission boundaries. That part is on you, not on AI.
Getting Started with SwiftData in iOS 26
If you’ve been using SwiftData, you probably noticed it was missing one thing that CoreData had for years: model inheritance. Well, iOS 26 finally brings it. Kodeco published a solid walkthrough that covers how it works. The article uses a simple recipe app example where a Beverage class inherits from Recipe, getting all parent properties for free. No code duplication. Just keep in mind this only works if your minimum target is iOS 26 or above 😔
🛠️ Toolbox
Core Data Agent Skill: Now available open-source
Antoine van der Lee released an open-source Agent Skill for Core Data. If your project still relies on Core Data (and let’s be honest, a lot of projects do), this can help your coding agent understand things like threading, batch operations, CloudKit integration, migration strategies, and more. He built it from his own articles and his Core Data Best Practices repo, so the quality is solid.
🍬 One More Thing…
Agentic Coding in Xcode 26.3: Full Walkthrough
Stuart Lynch recorded a fully live, unedited walkthrough of building two SwiftUI apps using Claude Agent right inside Xcode 26.3. He builds a habit tracker and a personal finance app from a single prompt, and you can see the whole process: how the agent creates Swift Data models, organizes files into folders, fixes its own build errors, and even generates project documentation and an engineering journal. He also shows how to set up agents, add skills (like Antoine van der Lee’s SwiftUI and Swift Concurrency skills), and use a global claude.md file for project-level instructions. If you’re curious what agentic coding actually looks like in practice, this is a great video to watch.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
📊 Last Week’s Poll Results
How do you currently use AI in your iOS development workflow?
Top Answer: For everything
🗓 Upcoming Conferences
March
April
12–14 — Try! Swift Tokyo 2026 (Tokyo 🇯🇵)
12–14 — Deep Dish Swift (Chicago 🇺🇸)
May
18–20 — Swift Craft 2026 (Folkestone 🇬🇧)
19–21 — MAU Vegas 2026 (Las Vegas 🇺🇸)
June
3–4 — MDevCamp 2026 (Prague 🇨🇿)
July
7–10 — MacAdmins Conference (State College 🇺🇸)
22–23 — Swift Rockies 2026 (Calgary 🇨🇦)
September
7–11 — Swift Island 2026 (Texel 🇳🇱)
October
7–9 — Next.App DevCon 2026 (Berlin 🇩🇪)
November
20–22 — SwiftSonic 26 (Nashville 🇺🇸)
👋 That’s it for this week
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Until next Friday — keep shipping 🍏