In this newsletter: WWDC is almost here, major updates for Control Room and Sitrep, Hacking with Swift+ gifts, and more!

Countdown to WWDC23

We’re now less than three weeks away from the biggest Apple event of the year! Lots of rumors are swirling, but I’m not one for speculation – I’m just looking forward to seeing all the fantastic new APIs from Apple’s engineers, and more importantly getting to meet a huge range of folks who travel to Cupertino just for the big day.

What’s on your wish list? Obviously for me I hope to see some major steps forward for SwiftUI, but I’m still holding out hope for a Swift-ier wrapper for Core Data.

Hopefully Apple will release their “Beyond Dub Dub” page soon, featuring all the community events taking place during WWDC week. The only event I’ve seen definitely confirmed is called “Students, Swift, Stars” and promises an evening full of app demos by young Swift developers, panel discussions, and more. If you’re in town, you can get your ticket here.

PS: Last month I launched a new range of Hacking with Swift merchandise. I have a special edition gift I hand out to anyone who meets me at any in-person event while wearing one of these new T-shirts or hoodies, so coming to WWDC is a great opportunity to get yours!

Hacking with Swift Live

My online charity conference is back this year, once again with the promise of cramming all the essential new APIs from WWDC down into just a handful of days. No matter what Apple announces, this event will be packed with knowledge – I’ll give you hundreds of hands-on code samples, all fully explained live, along with tasks for you to solve yourself so you can make sure the learning is sinking in.

Best of all, all ticket and sponsor revenues goes direct to charity, so you get to learn some amazing new Swift, meet like-minded people, and help change lives – all at the same time.

Find out more and get your ticket here: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/live

Thanks to sponsors!

Four companies very generously sponsored the site last month – thank you!

Instabug have published an article showing how your app’s stability and performance influence your users’ engagement, retention, spending, and perception of your brand. Learn more here.
RevenueCat can help you add subscriptions to your app in minutes using their open-source framework – get analytics, charts, price experiments, and more right out of the box. Learn more here.
Waldo can cut down the time you spend reproducing bugs, so you can focus on the fun part: building your next big app idea. Learn more here.
Glassfy gives you infrastructure to build IAPs into any app store, plus analytics on revenue performance, and growth tools to accelerate the revenue of your business. Learn more here.

Control Room 3.0 and Sitrep

A few days ago I released the first beta of Control Room 3.0, which is an open source macOS app for manipulating the iOS Simulator. It can do simple things like adjust the clock or change your virtual location, but it can also trigger deep links into your app, send virtual push notifications, grant and revoke permissions, and more – it’s a fantastic tool to help you develop apps more effectively, and it’s completely free.

Even better, the source code is all on GitHub, written with SwiftUI for macOS, so you’re welcome to check it out and even contribute features if you want! Get it here: https://github.com/twostraws/ControlRoom

I also released an update for Sitrep, which is a free tool I produced to scan Swift projects and report statistics such as number of classes and structs, longest files, most common imports, and more. It’s now fully updated for Swift 5.8, and you can grab it here: https://github.com/twostraws/Sitrep

Hacking with Swift+ gifts

Last week was spent mailing out first year, second year, and now third year gifts to Hacking with Swift+ subscribers, and it’s great to see folks posting pictures of them arriving around the world.

Each year you subscribe you get different gifts as a small thank you for your support, and if you take out an annual subscription you’re eligible for your first gift immediately. Please make sure you have a mailing address added to your Hacking with Swift account – without that, I can’t send your gifts!

PS: If you take out an annual team license for Hacking with Swift+, all members of your team also get immediate access to the full Hacking with Swift online reading library. Find out more here: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/plus

News from friends

There are three fantastic events coming up soon, and I encourage you to check them out.

First, James Dempsey and the Breakpoints are back for their Live near WWDC event. James and his crew have been singing songs and raising money for good causes for longer than I can remember, so when tickets go on sale later this week you can be sure they’ll be snapped up fast. If you’re smart, you’ll register here to be notified the moment tickets are available: https://livenearwwdc.com

Second, Women Who Code are running a free mobile and web summit next week, and everyone is invited. If you check out the list of speakers I think you’ll find something interesting for sure – go to https://hopin.com/events/mobile-web-dev-summit/registration and claim your free ticket today.

And finally, try! Swift New York is back once again, this time focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence with Swift. They have lots of jam-packed workshops, a whole day of talks, and an unbeatable atmosphere – definitely worth attending if you can!

Discounts on books

Here's a reminder of the supporter's discount codes you can use to save money on all my books:

Pro SwiftUI: https://gum.co/pro-swiftui/hws-thankyou
Pro Swift: https://gum.co/proswift/hws-thankyou
SwiftUI By Example: https://gum.co/swiftui/hws-thankyou
Swift Concurrency By Example: https://gum.co/concurrency/hws-thankyou
Hacking with iOS: https://gum.co/hws-book-pack/hws-thankyou
Swift Design Patterns: https://gum.co/swift-design-patterns/hws-thankyou
Testing Swift: https://gum.co/testing-swift/hws-thankyou
Swift on Sundays Volume One: https://gum.co/swift-on-sundays-1/hws-thankyou
Advanced iOS Volume One: https://gum.co/advanced-ios-1/hws-thankyou
Advanced iOS Volume Two: https://gum.co/advanced-ios-2/hws-thankyou
Advanced iOS Volume Three: https://gum.co/advanced-ios-3/hws-thankyou
Swift Coding Challenges: https://gum.co/swiftcc/hws-thankyou
Dive Into SpriteKit: https://gum.co/dive-into-spritekit/hws-thankyou
Hacking with macOS: https://gum.co/hwmacos/hws-thankyou
Hacking with watchOS: https://gum.co/hwwatchos/hws-thankyou
Hacking with tvOS: https://gum.co/hwtvos/hws-thankyou
Hacking with Swift Live Series 1: https://gum.co/hws-live-1/hws-thankyou
Objective-C for Swift Developers: https://gum.co/objcswift/hws-thankyou
Beyond Code: https://gum.co/beyondcode/hws-thankyou

Remember, if you already bought books from either the Swift Power Pack, the Swift Platform Pack, or the Swift Plus Pack and want to upgrade to the full bundle, I can create a custom discount code for you that takes off whatever you already paid – just email me.

One more thing…

A couple of weeks ago I attended Deep Dish Swift in Chicago. It was a really exciting event – it was clear folks were happy to be gathering in person again, and there was a really first-class speaker line up.

My talk was the closing keynote, where my theme was encouraging everyone to think difficult things and ask difficult questions – why do we do what we do, and what changes can we make to spend more time working on stuff that matters, and less time arguing about code, architecture, and (gulp!) tabs vs spaces.

Most people loved the talk, and I’m really grateful for all the folks who came to speak to me afterwards or wrote up nice things in their summary of the event. However, a couple of folks complained – “I came for an iOS conference not a lecture” said one person, and another said I came across as “spiteful and arrogant.” Of course, the term “virtue signaling” inevitably came up.

Back in October 2021, I wrote the following in this newsletter: “I consider myself extremely lucky to run Hacking with Swift, and quite frankly I’ll be damned if I don’t use what platform I have to make a difference to folks around me.”

Sometimes that means raising money for charity with events like Hacking with Swift Live. Sometimes that means volunteering to teach coding at both schools and universities. Sometimes that means housing refugees. Sometimes that means working with conferences to get a really diverse speaker line up. And of course every day that means doing as much as I can to create free tutorials and tools that benefit everyone.

I try my best to put my money and time where my mouth is, and I hope in doing so I can contribute something useful to this community. But I don’t want to stop there: I'd love to see everyone in this community working to make it better for others – welcoming more people, helping more people, and using the skills we have to make a difference in the world.

Whether your app teaches people guitar, helps kids with their mathematics homework, adds a new spin on to do lists, or something else, you are taking the skills you have and combining them with your unique perspective and background to help make the world better, and I’m grateful for you.

Paul

Find out more about Hacking with Swift Live

Hacking with Swift Newsletter: May 2025

Hacking with Swift Newsletter: April 2025

Hacking with Swift Newsletter: March 2025

Hacking with Swift Newsletter: February 2025

Hacking with Swift Newsletter: January 2025

See all posts from Paul Hudson