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In this edition: An incredible AAA game comes to Mac. Plus, the latest on International Women’s Day activities, WeChat, and more. Read the full article
Check out the official Apple Developer WeChat account to find news, announcements, and upcoming activities for the developer community. Learn more in Simplified Chinese
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In this edition: The latest on developer activities, the Swift Student Challenge, the team behind Bears Gratitude , and more. Read the full article
Submissions for the Swift Student Challenge 2025 are now open through February 23. You have three more weeks to design, test, refine, and submit your app playground for consideration to be named one of 350 winners. What to know: The Challenge is free to enter — you just need access to an iPad or Mac with Swift Playground or Xcode. The best app ideas are personal — let your passion shine through your work. No formal coding experience required — the Challenge is open to students of all levels. Your app playground doesn’t need to be intricate — it should be experienced within 3 minutes or less. Where to start: Explore tools and tutorials to build an incredible app playground. Get inspired by last year’s Distinguished Winners , learn about their winning apps, and read about their experiences at Apple Park. Learn more about the Challenge
In the first edition of the new year: Bring SwiftUI to your app in Cupertino, get ready for the Swift Student Challenge, meet the team behind Oko , and more. Read the full article
In this edition: The year in sessions, activities, apps, and games. Read the full article
Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, Devin Davies is an excellent cook. “I’m not, like, a professional or anything,” he says, in the way that people say they’re not good at something when they are. But in addition to knowing his way around the kitchen, Davies is also a seasoned developer whose app Crouton , a Swift-built cooking aid, won him the 2024 Apple Design Award for Interaction. Crouton is part recipe manager, part exceptionally organized kitchen assistant. For starters, the app collects recipes from wherever people find them — blogs, family cookbooks, scribbled scraps from the ’90s, wherever — and uses tasty ML models to import and organize them. “If you find something online, just hit the Share button to pull it into Crouton ,” says the New Zealand-based developer. “If you find a recipe in an old book, just snap a picture to save it.” And when it’s time to start cooking, Crouton reduces everything to the basics by displaying only the current step, ingredients, and measurements (including conversions). There’s no swiping around between apps to figure out how many fl oz are in a cup; no setting a timer in a different app. It’s all handled right in Crouton . “The key for me is: How quickly can I get you back to preparing the meal, rather than reading?” Davies says. ADA FACT SHEET Crouton Winner: Interaction Available on: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Team size: 1 Learn more about Crouton Download Crouton from the App Store Crouton is the classic case of a developer whipping up something he needed. As the de facto chef in the house, Davies had previously done his meal planning in the Notes app, which worked until, as he laughs, “it got a little out of hand.” At the time, Davies was in his salad days as an iOS developer, so he figured he could build something that would save him a little time. (It’s in his blood: Davies’s father is a developer too.) "Programming was never my strong suit,” he says, “but once I started building something that solved a problem, I started thinking of programming as a means to an end, and that helped.” Davies’s full-time job was his meal ticket, but he started teaching himself Swift on the side. Swift, he says, clicked a lot faster than the other languages he’d tried, especially as someone who was still developing a taste for programming. “It still took me a while to get my head into it,” he says, “but I found pretty early on that Swift worked the way I wanted a language to work. You can point Crouton at some text, import that text, and do something with it. The amount of steps you don’t have to think about is astounding.” I found pretty early on that Swift worked the way I wanted a language to work. Devin Davies, Crouton Coding with Swift offered plenty of baked-in benefits. Davies leaned on platform conventions to make navigating Crouton familiar and easy. Lists and collection views took advantage of Camera APIs. VisionKit powered text recognition; a separate model organized imported ingredients by category. “I could separate out a roughly chopped onion from a regular onion and then add the quantity using a Core ML model,” he says. “It’s amazing how someone like me can build a model to detect ingredients when I really have zero understanding of how it works.” Davies designed Crouton with simplicity in mind at all times. “I spent a lot of time figuring out what to leave out rather than bring in,” he says. The app came together quickly: The first version was done in about six months, but Crouton simmered for a while before finding its audience. “My mom and I were the main active users for maybe a year,” Davies laughs. “But it’s really important to build something that you use yourself — especially when you’re an indie — so there’s motivation to carry on.” Davies served up Crouton updates for a few years, and eventually the app gained more traction, culminating with its Apple Design Award for Interaction at WWDC24. That’s an appropriate category, Davies says, because he believes his approach to interaction is his app’s special sauce. “My skillset is figuring out how the pieces of an app fit together, and how you move through them from point A to B to C,” he says. “I spent a lot of time figuring out what to leave out rather than bring in.” Crouton recipes can be imported from blogs, cookbook, scraps of paper, or anywhere else they might be found. Davies hopes to use the coming months to explore spicing up Crouton with Apple Intelligence, Live Activities on Apple Watch, and translation APIs. (Though Crouton is his primary app, he’s also built an Apple Vision Pro app called Plate Smash , which is presumably very useful for cooking stress relief.) But it’s important to him that any new features or upgrades pair nicely with the current Crouton . “I’m a big believer in starting out with core intentions and holding true to them,” he says. “I don’t think that the interface, over time, has to be completely different.” My skillset is figuring out how the pieces of an app fit together, and how you move through them from point A to B to C. Devin Davies, Crouton Because it’s a kitchen assistant, Crouton is a very personal app. It’s in someone’s kitchen at mealtime, it’s helping people prepare means for their loved ones, it’s enabling them to expand their culinary reach. It makes a direct impact on a person’s day. That’s a lot of influence to have as an app developer — even when a recipe doesn’t quite pan out. “Sometimes I’ll hear from people who discover a bug, or even a kind of misunderstanding, but they’re always very kind about it,” laughs Davies. “They’ll tell me, ‘Oh, I was baking a cake for my daughter’s birthday, and I put in way too much cream cheese and I ruined it. But, great app!’” Meet the 2024 Apple Design Award winners Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from finalists and winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.
In this edition: The Swift Pathway, new developer activities around the world, and an interview with the creator of recipe app Crouton . Read the full article
Get your app up to speed, meet the team behind Lies of P, explore new student resources, and more. Read the full article
We’re thrilled to announce the Swift Student Challenge 2025. The Challenge provides the next generation of student developers the opportunity to showcase their creativity and coding skills by building app playgrounds with Swift. Applications for the next Challenge will open in February 2025 for three weeks. We’ll select 350 Swift Student Challenge winners whose submissions demonstrate excellence in innovation, creativity, social impact, or inclusivity. From this esteemed group, we’ll name 50 Distinguished Winners whose work is truly exceptional and invite them to join us at Apple in Cupertino for three incredible days where they’ll gain invaluable insights from Apple experts and engineers, connect with their peers, and enjoy a host of unforgettable experiences. All Challenge winners will receive one year of membership in the Apple Developer Program, a special gift from Apple, and more. To help you get ready, we’re launching new coding resources, including Swift Coding Clubs designed for students to develop skills for a future career, build community, and get ready for the Challenge. Learn more
Get your apps ready by digging into these video sessions and resources. Explore machine learning on Apple platforms Watch now Bring expression to your app with Genmoji Watch now Browse new resources Learn how to make actions available to Siri and Apple Intelligence. Ebook actions Camera actions Presentation actions Need a boost? Check out our curated guide to machine learning and AI. FEATURED Get ready for OS updates Dive into the latest updates with these developer sessions. Level up your games Port advanced games to Apple platforms Watch now Design advanced games for Apple platforms Watch now Bring your vision to life Design great visionOS apps Watch now Design interactive experiences for visionOS Watch now Upgrade your iOS and iPadOS apps Extend your app’s controls across the system Watch now Elevate your tab and sidebar experience in iPadOS Watch now Browse Apple Developer on YouTube Get expert guidance Check out curated guides to the latest features and technologies. Games visionOS iOS and iPadOS BEHIND THE DESIGN Rytmos: A puzzle game with a global beat Find out how Floppy Club built an Apple Design Award winner that sounds as good as it looks. Behind the Design: The rhythms of Rytmos View now MEET WITH APPLE Reserve your spot for upcoming developer activities Envision the future: Create great apps for visionOS : Find out how to build visionOS apps for a variety of use cases. (October 2, Cupertino) Build faster and more efficient apps : Learn how to optimize your use of Apple frameworks, resolve performance issues, and reduce launch time. (October 23, Cupertino) Subscribe to Hello Developer Want to get Hello Developer in your inbox? Make sure you’ve opted in to receive emails about developer news and events by updating your email preferences in your developer account . Share your thoughts We’d love to hear from you. If you have suggestions for our activities or stories, please let us know .
