I used to use AppCode few years ago. But it was discontinued. It was easy for me to use AppCode since it was from JetBrains and I was used to using IntelliJ.
It is a pain to use XCode due to being used to JetBrains IDEs.
Does XCode have monopoly for IOS development?
I built Lys, a less bloated, open-source Xcode for coding agents. It’s not trying to be another IDE or “Cursor for iOS”. You bring the coding harness you already use, like Codex, Claude Code or OpenCode, and Lys handles the iOS side around it.
Agents can use the simulator and actually test the app, see runtime issues and collect evidence instead of just writing code and hoping it works. I also built a testing SDK for Swift and Expo/React Native because I wasn’t really happy with the existing approaches for letting agents test apps.
I ended up adding TestFlight too because Apple dashboards are slow and annoying. You can manage builds and testers, see feedback and send a tester’s feedback straight to your agent to fix.
Still early and there are bugs/things missing, but it’s already how I prefer working on iOS apps. Free and open-source.
Hey,
I've been working on this for a while and thought I'd share it here.
It's called PkgLift and basically, I wanted an easier way to deal with moving older Xcode projects from CocoaPods to Swift Package-manager.
I know you can obviously do this manually but I didn't really like the idea of going through everything by hand, especially on projects with a many dependencies!
The thing I was worried about when building it was making a tool that just changes a bunch of stuff and assumes it worked. So PkgLift doesn't really work like that.
You first run:
pkglift analyze
pkglift plan
and it tries to work out what it actually knows how to migrate.
If it isn't sure about something it just leaves it alone instead of trying to guess.
Then you can check the plan yourself before actually changing anything.
If it looks good:
pkglift migrate --apply
pod install
pkglift verify
That's pretty much the idea.
It is still early and I'm sure there are plenty of CocoaPods setups that I haven't thought about yet, which is actually one of the reasons I'm posting it here.
You can install it with:
brew install Alexsvensson99/tap/pkglift
Repo:
https://github.com/Alexsvensson99/PkgLift
If anyone has an old CocoaPods project lying around and wants to try it, I'd be interested to know what happens. Especially if it fails on something weird :)
Hi, I'm new here and just joined this community. I'm an Animation student that are very unfamiliar with code nor app development, but i am eager to learn from the very begining and willing to start building my coding skill & knowledge a lot more. and for context the reason i want to learn about coding is because, as a designer/creative worker, i want to implement all my design knowledge into something that are useable and could empower people to use my app. but before that ofcourse i have to learn code first. any tips for begineer? thanks!
Same as title.
For the past few days I've been trying to download the iOS Runtime Simulator on my mac (M4MBA), and it keeps showing preparing to download with no progress.
I've tried everything at this point, from using Command Line to download it, to searching for it to download off of the developer platform. If there is a fix, please do let me know. Any help will be highly appreciated! :)
As per title (and with the severity of these warnings ignored,) when the default project is already showing warnings and errors before you've even touched anything, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Anyone having trouble with downloading MetalToolChain? Im using the latest developer beta of macos and xcode beta 5. When downloading MetalToolChain it says preparing download but doesnt download anything. Tried both GUI and CLI, others facing the same issue?
Hi zusammen,
Da es noch keinen offiziellen Client für Music Assistant auf iOS gibt, habe ich mich selber drangemacht. Ist ein bisschen ausgeufert.
CarPlay
Apple Watch
iPad
iPhone
Und gerade werkele ich an - tataaa - Apple TV.
Wer Lust hat, kann ja mal reinschnuppern: https://www.mobile-ma.app/.
Hoffe, ihr habt Spaß damit. Ich hab ihn. Und hab weiter Spaß am Entwickeln.
Kept mixing these up early on so wrote down the actual differences once I got both working properly.
TestFlight — no UDID collection, Apple reviews the build before it's live (can take a few hours), testers need the TestFlight app + an invite. Scales to 10k testers.
EAS Preview (Ad-Hoc) — you register tester UDIDs first (eas device:create or they scan a QR to self-register), then eas build --platform ios --profile preview. Install is instant via link/QR, no App Store account needed. But you're capped around 100 devices/year on a standard Apple Developer account.
Ended up using Ad-Hoc for day-to-day dev testing (way faster feedback loop) and TestFlight once a build's stable enough to hand to a wider group. Anyone doing it differently?
Made this, so obvious bias, but the problem is real enough that I think it's worth posting.
Everyone saves cooking videos. Nobody cooks from them. The video is a terrible format for actually standing at a hob with your hands covered in something, and a lot of creators never write the recipe down anywhere at all.
ReciReel takes a shared video from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or YouTube and writes the recipe out properly. Amounts, steps in order, timings, nutrition per serving including net carbs, equipment list.
It reads what's happening in the video rather than just the caption, which matters more than it sounds like it should, because so many captions are just "recipe below 👇" and then there's nothing below.
Free tier is 3 imports then 1 a month, so you can see if it's any good without paying. iPhone, iOS 18+, US store.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/recireel-video-to-recipe/id6763971435
If anyone here has tried the other apps in this space I'd be interested in what made you stop using them. That's more useful to me than praise.
Is it normal that Apple wants api keys in their feedbacks?
Edit: this is a hello world project with key added through settings + clicking the diagnose button. https://imgur.com/a/LqBK7M1
My Xcode is not compromised:
spctl --assess --type execute -v /Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode
/Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode: accepted
How do you guys do iOS development remotely?
I can SSH into my Mac pretty easily, but the annoying part is running builds and interacting with the Simulator remotely.
For those who sometimes develop away from their Mac, what setup do you use?
26.6 is officialy out https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios-ipados-release-notes/ios-ipados-26_6-release-notes but I can't fetch the newest simulator for Xcode.
xcodebuild -downloadPlatform iOS -exportPath ~/Downloads -buildVersion 26.6 also doesn't work
I’m having a horrible time with Xcode. The user interface is not friendly at all in terms of accessibility. For starters, the tooltips are so bloody small on my 16 inch MacBook that it is hard to read.. Same with the side help menu as well.
Are there any other IDEs which can be used? It’s a shame because the Swift language is good, but Xcode is shit.
I know there is visual studio code, but instead of running the application via Swift build or Swift run from terminal I kind of want to use the user interface, such as a run button or something. I don’t think that’s possible in Visual Studio Code?
I provide a lot of feedback on Xcode 27 beta regarding the tooltip size, but Apple does not reply or do anything about it. It kind of makes people wonder how they are using Xcode in their workplace.
When I add an external tester on TestFlight and send out the invite, the user tells me the app fails to install. I tried creating a public link, but clicking that shows the message, "this app is not accepting beta testing".
One idea I had is that our company devices are associated with Apple IDs separate from our work emails. I don't even know they have email inboxes. Could they be the issue? Not sure why that would matter, since even the public link doesn't work.
Incredibly frustrating. Please help.
The latest update added official Gemini support to use with the AI features. However, there doesn’t seem to be read-only and undo buttons during Gemini sessions. This leaves me worried that any planning-type query may result in actually doing the changes, with copying the current text out to counter it.
Do Gemini sessions have read-only modes and undo buttons, and I’m just holding it wrong? Or did Google/Apple leave it out?
