Swift Playgrounds 4.6.1 Removes Subscription Feeds

I use Swift Playgrounds on iPad to run an intro to programming class with high school students. I've created some custom playground books based on Apple's guides to provide some simple sandboxes to learn basic coding.

Students simply click a button on my website, which downloads my playground books so students can easily create new sandboxes.

With Swift Playgrounds 4.6.1 on both Mac and iPad, clicking the link only opens Swift Playgrounds and does not download my playground books! There used to be an "Add a Subscription URL" button, but it is no longer present on the Learn to Code page or anywhere else in the app that I can find:

Is it intentional that this functionality is removed? Playground Books still appear to work, and documentation for subscription feeds is still available.

I start another session with my students next Monday, so I need to know as soon as possible whether I need to plan to work around this myself.

Thanks, Mark Schmidt

This is important for me as well. I sent a feedback from the app about it. I think that that's the channel to let the team know about our concerns.

Support for subscriptions has been removed in Swift Playground 4.6 and later.

One alternative that may work is to publish the individual playgrounds to your website. Tapping a link to a zipped-up app playground should allow it to open directly in Swift Playground on download.

The new document browser experience also makes it easier to work with external storage providers, like shared iCloud folders, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. You may consider distributing your playgrounds in a shared folder, which students can then copy out of or work directly in.

Swift Playgrounds 4.6.1 Removes Subscription Feeds
 
 
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