Swift Playgrounds 4 lets anyone build iPhone and iPad apps right on an iPad and submit them directly to the Apple App Store.

“Swift Playgrounds is the best and easiest way to learn how to code,” the Apple announcement notes.
“And with Swift Playgrounds 4, you have the tools to build iPhone and iPad apps right on iPad and submit them directly to App Store Connect, providing a new way for you to easily create apps and share them with the world. Code is immediately reflected in the live preview as you build apps, and you can run your apps full screen to test them out.”

In addition to using Apple’s Swift programming language, Swift Playgrounds also lets budding programmers access SwiftUI, a modern UI framework, and Swift Packages, bundles of reusable code, to create apps. But unlike other developer environments, Swift Playgrounds was built for touch, with touch-based color pickers and the ability to drag blocks of code from place to place.

The Mac version of the app is basically just the iPad version adapted via Mac Catalyst, and you can open Playground projects in the more professional Xcode on Mac if desired as well.

Tagged with Swift, Swift Playgrounds