Coding and design starter kit
June 22, 2020
Whether you’re learning to code early on or coming to it later in life, we want to help you start developing for Apple platforms. Discover how Swift Playgrounds approaches learning to code in a fun and educational way and try your hand at Swan’s Quest, a four-chapter series from the Swift Playgrounds team that challenges you to think creatively about accessibility and music while solving coding problems.
Learn how to build an app in SwiftUI from scratch, and explore creating your very own widget to put the best of your app right on someone’s home screen. Incorporate Siri intelligence to make your apps smarter and more contextually aware of someone’s day. And learn how you can design apps for everyone by making them accessible and engaging.
Swan’s Quest
The Swift Playgrounds team presents "Swan’s Quest,” an interactive adventure in four chapters for all ages. Use your programming prowess to aid our Hero in navigating through dark caves, decoding scrolls, and writing music.
Swan’s Quest was created for Swift Playgrounds on iPad and Mac, combining frameworks and resources which power the educational experiences in many of our playgrounds, including Sonic Workshop, Sensor Arcade, and Augmented Reality. To learn more about creating your own Swift Playgrounds adventures, check out our related sessions.
Swan's Quest, Chapter 1: Voices in the dark
Swift Playgrounds presents "Swan’s Quest,” an interactive adventure in four chapters for all ages. In this chapter, our Hero must navigate a dark cave — and the only way to light the torches is to make them accessible. Learn about VoiceOver and write interesting audio descriptions. You just...
Swan's Quest, Chapter 2: A time for tones
Swift Playgrounds presents "Swan’s Quest,” an interactive adventure in four chapters for all ages. In this chapter, our Hero needs your help decoding the Swan’s scroll. Call forth the best of your audio abilities on this one — you’re going to need them. Discover how to convert Swift...
Swan's Quest, Chapter 3: The notable scroll
Swift Playgrounds presents "Swan’s Quest,” an interactive adventure in four chapters for all ages. Calling all musicians! In this chapter, our Hero has found a mysterious scroll of music, and only you can help decode it. (Don’t worry if you can’t read music, our clever Lizard is standing by...
Swan's Quest, Chapter 4: The sequence completes
Swift Playgrounds presents "Swan’s Quest,” an interactive adventure in four chapters for all ages. It’s time for the grand finale: You’ve honed your skills with tones, but in this chapter our Hero needs to sequence multi-part harmony. Discover how to play pitched instruments with MIDI...
Build in Swift Playgrounds
Swift Playgrounds helps people on iPad and Mac learn to code in Swift and experiment with new tools and frameworks. Discover how to prototype ideas in SwiftUI within Swift Playgrounds using improved editing tools. We'll also show you how you can create your own Swift Playgrounds books to help teach programming concepts or explore new ideas and share them with the community — and how to tailor them to the power of each platform.
Create Swift Playgrounds content for iPad and Mac
Learn how to create Swift Playgrounds books that work fluidly across both Mac and iPad and help people of all ages explore the fun of coding in Swift. We’ll walk you through how to customize content for each platform while considering platform settings, and help you take advantage of them in your...
Build a SwiftUI view in Swift Playgrounds
Easily prototype and play around with SwiftUI views when you use them with Swift Playgrounds. We’ll show you how to build a SwiftUI view in a Xcode-compatible playground, and explore tools to help you easily edit and preview your code. For more on Swift Playgrounds, check out our interactive...
Widgets Code-along
Come and build a widget with us! Download a starter app and code along as we create a widget from start to finish. Discover fundamental concepts for widgets and their structure, learn how to rewrite your widget’s future and travel into alternate timelines, and explore how to create multiple widgets that highlight different features within your app.
Widgets Code-along, part 1: The adventure begins
Take your app on a most wondrous adventure to the home and Today screens of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Grab the starter project and code along with us! We will guide you through the process of creating a widget for your app from start to finish so that you can provide people with beautiful views and...
Widgets Code-along, part 2: Alternate timelines
Our code-along continues as we help our widget rewrite the future and travel into an alternate timeline. Continue where you left off from Part 1, or traverse time and space and begin with the Part 2 starter project to jump right into the action. Find out how you can integrate system intelligence...
Widgets Code-along, part 3: Advancing timelines
Take your widget to the next level as we embark upon the third and final stage of the widgets code-along. Pick up where you left off in Part 2 or start with the Part 3 starter project to go warp speed ahead. We’ll explore advanced concepts for widgets, timelines, and configuration. Learn how to...
Design for intelligence
Intelligence is a core part of building a great modern app. App extensions, Siri suggestions, voice, widgets, app clips — we’ve designed all of these features to help make everyday tasks easier for people who use our platforms. By implementing these APIs, your app can help people spend less time getting more done.
Design for intelligence: Apps, evolved
Intelligence is a core part of building a great modern app. App extensions, Siri suggestions, voice, widgets, App Clips — we’ve designed all of these features to help make everyday tasks easier for people who use our platforms. Learn about the origins of the intelligent system experience, and...
Design for intelligence: Discover new opportunities
Learn how extensibility is key to surfacing the most important features of your app into new entry points of the operating system. And discover how — by breaking out of the constraints of a monolithic container — your app can see increased engagement through suggestions on the lock screen, in...
Design for intelligence: Meet people where they are
Understand what motivates people to use your app — and how you can use system intelligence to help them and achieve your own goals as a developer. We'll take a look at a typical person's journey to better understand how an app can become a key part of their routine — and why some apps just...
Design for intelligence: Make friends with "The System"
The building blocks of the intelligent system are simple: Define, learn, execute. Discover how you can use intents to define your app's key features, create donations to help the system learn and make predictions about the future, and implement extensibility to ensure your app is ready to execute...
Explore more
App essentials in SwiftUI
Thanks to the new App protocol, SwiftUI now supports building entire apps! See how Apps, Scenes, and Views fit together. Learn how easy it is to implement the features people expect from a best-in-class product while saving time and reducing complexity. Easily add expected functionality to your...
What's new in SwiftUI
SwiftUI can help you build better and more powerful apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Learn more about the latest refinements to SwiftUI, including interface improvements like outlines, grids, and toolbars. Take advantage of SwiftUI’s enhanced support across Apple frameworks...
Designed for iPad
Discover the building blocks for designing a great iPad app: Learn how to minimize use of modal interfaces and leverage the new sidebar to increase efficiency by streamlining navigation and facilitating powerful drag and drop interactions. See how to take advantage of iPad’s versatile interaction...
Make your app visually accessible
When you design with accessibility in mind, you empower everyone to use your app. Discover how to create an adaptive interface for your app that takes a thoughtful approach to color, provides readable text, and accommodates other visual settings to maintain a great experience throughout. We’ve...
Build SwiftUI views for widgets
Widgets are bite-sized pieces of information from your app that someone can choose to place on their home screen or Today view. Discover the process of building the views for a widget from scratch using SwiftUI. Brush up on the syntax that you’ll need for widget-specific construction and learn...
SF Symbols 2
SF Symbols make it easy to adopt high-quality, Apple-designed symbols created to look great with San Francisco, the system font for all Apple platforms. Discover how you can use SF Symbols in AppKit, UIKit, and SwiftUI. Learn how to work with SF Symbols in common design tools and how to use them in...
Create complications for Apple Watch
When you add complications to a Watch app, people can access glanceable and up to date information directly from their watch face. We’ll show you how to create and build complications from the ground up and introduce you to Multiple Complications. Learn how to construct timelines, use families...
What's new in watchOS design
Great watchOS apps are simple and direct. Actions should be discoverable, predictable and relevant. This session covers effective strategies for displaying actions in your watchOS app, whether they are primary buttons that begin core tasks, or contextual actions that might be less commonly used but...
Getting started with HealthKit
HealthKit helps you build world-class health and fitness apps by centralizing health data from third-party apps, iPhone, Apple Watch, and external health devices. Discover how you can manage authorization and privacy around Health data, read and write data to the shared Health Store, and use...
Meet Safari Web Extensions
When you create a Safari Web Extension, you can help people get common online tasks done more quickly and efficiently. We’ll show you how to build a new Safari Web Extension and host it on the App Store, as well as how to use the safari-web-extension-converter tool to migrate existing extensions...
What's new in Universal Links
Universal Links help people access your content, whether or not they have your app installed. Get the details on the latest updates for the Universal Links API, including support for Apple Watch and SwiftUI. Learn how you can reduce the size and complexity of your app-site-association file with...
What's new in education
For over 40 years, Apple has been working with educators to create technologies for students, teachers, and school administrators and help them share in a rich and meaningful learning experience. Explore the breadth of Apple's education technologies, including classroom management apps and tools...