17 ms·

Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

369 points by davidbarker 8mo ago

avaer 8mo ago
I was really not expecting Apple to jump on this bandwagon, but I guess this was inevitable.
bigyabai 8mo ago
Thanks Apple, but "agentic coding" was already very possible without Xcode supporting it natively. Always gotta get your OKRs, I guess.
- wahnfrieden 8mo ago
  Xcode previews weren’t possible via agents
minimaxir 8mo ago
[deleted]
- ianhawes 8mo ago
  > The Claude Agent SDK is a collection of tools that helps developers build powerful agents on top of Claude Code. https://claude.com/blog/building-agents-with-the-claude-agent-sdk https://claude.com/blog/building-agents-with-the-claude-agen... From September 29, 2025
msie 8mo ago
I wish they put their energy elsewhere like fix bugs, make faster.
meetpateltech 8mo ago
Anthropic's blog: > Apple’s Xcode now supports the Claude Agent SDK https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk
giancarlostoro 8mo ago
My annoyance is that it sounds like I can't just use Claude Code directly in XCode? I like how Zed does it, it's not perfect, but it works really nicely.
- CharlesW 8mo ago
  Xcode is using the Claude Agent SDK, which means that you "get the full power of Claude Code directly in Xcode—including subagents, background tasks, and plugins—all without leaving the IDE¹". I assume that means iOS development plug-ins like Axiom² should work as well. ¹ https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk ² https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/
  - giancarlostoro 8mo ago
    But via my Claude Code usage or via the API usage?
cap10morgan 8mo ago
I am already using Claude in Xcode 26.2. What did they change / add specifically in 26.3? It's not super clear behind the marketing haze.
- Someone 8mo ago
  FTA: “In addition to these built-in integrations, Xcode 26.3 makes its capabilities available through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that gives developers the flexibility to use any compatible agent or tool with Xcode.” There may be other improvements.
- dd8601fn 8mo ago
  I tried the three provider types with xcodes current agent integration pane and just trying to use them crashed xcode itself so badly that the ide couldn’t even be launched.
- etothet 8mo ago
  I came here to ask this question. I find the existing agentic coding integraton to be clunky and slow. I've had much better luck with my Xcode projects just using my agentic coding tool of choice in the CLI.
OGEnthusiast 8mo ago
I wonder how much of the recent Apple OS releases were done with "agentic coding".
- spzb 8mo ago
  UI design clearly was done by a chatbot.
  - verdverm 8mo ago
    spray those menu icons everywhere
- radicaldreamer 8mo ago
  According to Mark Gurman (Bloomberg Apple beat reporter), Apple “runs on Claude.” https://x.com/tbpn/status/2016911797656367199?s=61 https://x.com/tbpn/status/2016911797656367199?s=61
  - gbriel 8mo ago
    "custom versions of Claude"
    - radicaldreamer 8mo ago
      The same thing they’re doing with Gemini, creating custom versions, is likely what they’ve done with Claude and OpenAI models as well. They’re likely evaluating all of them internally with employees all the time.
  - richrichardsson 8mo ago
    That makes sense. The latest Sequoia update can't understand it's done updating and shows the "welcome" message every time I boot. I won't upgrade to Tahoe until absolutely necessary. It's like Apple is doing everything in its power to alienate their users.
- k_bx 8mo ago
OsamaJaber 8mo ago
MCP support is the real story here Means you're not locked into Claude or Codex Can plug in whatever agent you want
- stale-labs 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- geooff_ 8mo ago
  100% I hope they open more of the tooling to MCP, Xcode Instruments with real MCP support would be huge.
  - RobMurray 8mo ago
    Just a good CLI would be even better, usable by humans, CI scripts and agents.
- mrtesthah 8mo ago
  Was surprised they use MCP for this and not ACP.
- zombot 8mo ago
  > plug in whatever agent you want Noob question: Does that include local models?
  - vaxman 8mo ago
    Only theoretically at this point, though they will tend to speak confidently enough about such untested capabilities so as to cause millions in investment losses to others. One would think a hardware manufacturer that's teetering on the abyss would go full out and implement a vLLM interface (maybe a folder of local models that can be downloaded as components in the Xcode-way and also a router too), but their NIH mentality has them tripping over their own Graydey's. There is nothing special about Apple Silicon except the head start they had and that they're squandering.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
flohofwoe 8mo ago
Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.
- emchammer 8mo ago
  A lot of macOS needs that. There are some terrific ideas under the hood, but it’s as if people left halfway through implementing them.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    It's a damn shame, the hardware is pretty amazing and I wish they just had like one person who cared about Linux working at Apple and then make a small promise to not rugpull Linux users.
    - ndiddy 8mo ago
      I think one thing that shows Apple's position towards open source in general is that they don't allow their employees to work on open source projects in their own time and using their own equipment. Before anyone brings up that California labor code provision, it has a carve-out for "activities that relate to the employer's business". Since Apple is big enough and has their fingers in enough pies that they can credibly say that virtually any open source projects developed by Apple employees are related to their business, I would be wary about fighting them in court over this.
      - jajuuka 8mo ago
        I don't think this is it. I can only find one tweet from an Apple employee who said that they can't work on OSS and was looking for new maintainers. I am not sold that this is the whole truth. I think the bigger issue is contributing to OSS for putting Linux on a Macbook for example could be considered leaking company secrets since you would have access to internals. I find it hard to believe that Apple would go after someone for making a open source calculator app.
HlessClaudesman 8mo ago
Just in time for AI to go all tits up.
jonathanstrange 8mo ago
As long as it's purely opt-in and before opting in no data is ever sent to some server and no source code can be changed by it, I'm okay with it.
almosthere 8mo ago
Does agents.md allow for automatic discovery of mcp tools (Tools: run ./tool-discovery.sh)
classicsc 8mo ago
I'm looking forward to trying the SwiftUI preview integration, though from my experience using the xcodebuildmcp and axe tools to let agents run simulators and capture screenshots, expectations will be low. It seemed like the models were capable of identifying issues like "button that should be there is not displayed", but not identifying when the layout is wrong or some element is too big.
mohsen1 8mo ago
I built an entire iOS app without opening Xcode UI even once. Why so many iOS engineers prefer XCode?
- radicaldreamer 8mo ago
  Is this bait? XCode has been a mainstay of iOS development ever since iOS was introduced and is a successor to Interface Builder on the Mac. Why wouldn’t engineers prefer tools they’ve been using (mostly happily) for a decade+?
  - s_dev 8mo ago
    >Is this bait? I don't think it's a serious question or the person is very young. To answer the question. Xcode is the default IDE for iOS development. The default option will always be a practical choice. JetBrains or Anthropic could get bought by a larger company or dismantled by the government somehow. Should anything happen to Apple (unlikely as that may seem) the entire iOS ecosystem would be gone as well negating any need for a default.
    - wahnfrieden 8mo ago
      Some influential iOS devs such as @dimillian and @steipete have moved away from Xcode or even xcodebuild where possible.
      - s_dev 8mo ago
        Which is completely fine. However these are people with lots of experience in Xcode already. People can have preferences including default options.
    - mohsen1 8mo ago
      I wish I was young! I have used Xcode in the past. It's just way too slow and anything it does, other IDEs do faster for me.
- ukuina 8mo ago
thedangler 8mo ago
First time I tried it, claude built all the files in the wrong directory lol. It's working fine now.
mrtksn 8mo ago
So far I find OpenAI’s Codex app to be the right approach for me. I can’t stand AI integrated IDE’s, it creeps me out when code starts changing at a phase that I can’t follow. Yesterday in few hours I released an update for my mac App that I haven’t been working on for over a year. The update easily performed as expected, did a few small manual touches on the UI and the app just got approved on AppStore(like minutes ago)[0]. This is very good because normally I would not remember much about the code, so doing an update for a long forgotten code becomes huge pain. Good for Apple but I think I feel most comfortable on Codex app. I think I like having the AI separated from the IDE so I feel in control in the IDE. [0] Codex implemented the functionality demo on the paywall, if you want to see it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound-switcher/id6695723746 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound-switcher/id...
cyberax 8mo ago
How about adding a horizontal scroll to sidebars? No? "Agentic this", "agentic that"... It's literally just an LLM in a while() loop with some exposed tools.
- SgtBastard 8mo ago
  Fancy while() loops is how I describe them.
enraged_camel 8mo ago
I have not been able to switch to Opus 4.5 in XCode. It defaults to Sonnet 4.5 and I couldn't find where to change it (or if it's possible). Anyone know?
spzb 8mo ago
[flagged]
pjmlp 8mo ago
Goodbye CoPilot plugin, yet another platform Microsoft loses on. https://github.com/github/CopilotForXcode https://github.com/github/CopilotForXcode
geooff_ 8mo ago
This is huge news. Human-in-the-loop development is essential for actual software velocity gains. The current tooling around agent enabled iOS dev leaves a lot to be desired. Every time I work on web-dev tasks I'm jealous of the tooling.
thought_alarm 8mo ago
Release notes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26_3-release-notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-note... Surprisingly, this version does not require MacOS 26 (Tahoe).
- r2vcap 8mo ago
  From my years of iOS development—and based on https://xcodereleases.com https://xcodereleases.com typically ships two major Xcode updates each year: - X.0 (September): bumps Swift, SDK versions, etc. It also tends to have a noticeably longer beta cycle than other releases. - X.3 or X.4 (around March): bumps Swift again and raises the minimum required macOS version. Other releases in between are usually smaller updates that add features or fix bugs, but they don’t involve major toolchain-level or fundamental changes. Today’s release doesn’t bump the Swift version, which suggests the core toolchain is essentially the same as Xcode 26.2—so it makes sense that the minimum macOS version wasn’t raised either.
- w10-1 8mo ago
  > this version does not require MacOS 26 I think it is required for any AI support. Xcode will run with limited features on earlier OS's.
  - f0rmatfunction 8mo ago
    Agreed - I tried installing Xcode26.3 on my mac running Sequoia and there's no "intelligence" pane in Xcode settings to connect Claude like there is in the docs.
- zombot 8mo ago
  But Sequoia is already a noticeably worse bugfest than Sonoma, so I'm loath to update.
- debo_ 8mo ago
  Maybe the xcode developers hate Tahoe as much as HN seems to.
SirMaster 8mo ago
I don't think I'm ready for my phone apps to get even more sloppy... I wonder if they used this internally to write iOS 26? Would explain some things...
mikeocool 8mo ago
"visually by capturing Xcode Previews" is probably the thing that will make this worthwhile, also if it's able to interact with the simulator that would be killer. Beyond that, I'd just keep using Claude Code in the terminal.
- geooff_ 8mo ago
  It doesn't interact with sim. You still need XcodeBuildMCP for that. Hopefully future releases implement this functionality.
  - CharlesW 8mo ago
    > You still need XcodeBuildMCP for that. Or Axiom (https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/), which should now work great from within Xcode since Apple's using Claude Code SDK. "Developers get the full power of Claude Code directly in Xcode—including subagents, background tasks, and plugins—all without leaving the IDE." — https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk
HaloZero 8mo ago
Maybe now they have Claude inside Xcode, the Xcode developers can work faster on fixing all the Xcode issues. Or is Xcode developed not using Xcode... (I also 2nd the question about what's really the difference between this and the Xcode 26.2)
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
forrestthewoods 8mo ago
Who cares about AI’s embedded in IDEs? Here’s the tooling I need * text editor with intellisense * build system * visual debugger * CLI coding agent It’s totally fine if those four things are different. In fact I actually probably prefer them to be different. Having an all-in-one IDE is a complete and total non-goal. People have historically confused the first three as needing to be a single IDE. This has always been wrong. The number of people who think you can’t debug with Visual Studio if the exe wasn’t built from a .sln is shocking. They’re all independent!
- 9dev 8mo ago
  Why would you ever want a debugger that isn't integrated with the code editor..? I will never not want to debug code when the current breakpoint and evaluated expressions aren't visible in the code itself. I mean, look at debugging in IntelliJ: https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2025.3/hotswap-popup_dark.png https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2025.3/hotswap... As opposed to the terminal: https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1698043355289/8c2d427d-b584-4411-8870-d5551c0f7de5.png https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v16980433...
  - forrestthewoods 8mo ago
    False dichotomy. Terminal debugging is garbage. The GUI you use for writing code doesn’t have to be the same GUI you use for debugging code. RemedyBG: https://remedybg.itch.io/remedybg https://remedybg.itch.io/remedybg RadDbg: https://x.com/rfleury/status/1747756219404779845?s=46 https://x.com/rfleury/status/1747756219404779845?s=46 I mostly edit code in VSCode. I mostly debug code in VisualStudio. They don’t have to be the same. I do concede that one tool to rule them all is appealing. But ultimately I work with many different languages so it’s kind of a multi-tool world no matter how you slice it.
r2vcap 8mo ago
Wait… https://xcodereleases.com https://xcodereleases.com hasn’t shown anything since last December, so I assumed Apple had taken a breather from Xcode development, but they released an RC build today? Anyway, the Swift version seems unchanged (6.2.3), so is this update mainly for the so-called “Coding Intelligence” features? In any case, Xcode isn’t my favorite IDE—it’s too slow and feels quite different from other major IDEs—so I probably won’t use it for day-to-day coding (though it’s fine for building and debugging).
- hn-acct 8mo ago
  swift --version is showing 6.2.4 for me
  - r2vcap 8mo ago
    Thanks for clarifying. Since I don’t use the LLM features in Xcode, I’m leaning toward skipping this version.
Oras 8mo ago
As MKBHD would say, welcome to 2026, Apple.
- RobMurray 8mo ago
  more like welcome to 2024. and when they release decent CLI build tools we can welcome them to the 21st century.
mlajtos 8mo ago
Does it support API key access or only Claude.ai subscription?
- argsnd 8mo ago
  Both
- openclawai 8mo ago
  Worth noting that "API key access" vs "subscription" has significant cost implications for heavy users. Claude.ai Pro is $20/month flat. But if you're doing serious agent-assisted coding (multi-file refactors, iterative debugging loops), you can blow through $50-100/day in API costs. The math changes depending on usage patterns. Subscription makes sense for interactive coding sessions. API keys make sense if you're batch processing or running agents autonomously overnight.
  - mlajtos 8mo ago
    I am doing interactive coding sessions via API. I don't want to see a message that I am over limit to use the best model there is.
anupamchugh 8mo ago
When do you actually need to open Xcode if you have XcodeBuildMCP [0]? I haven't opened Xcode in months. My terminal: Claude writes code. build_sim. launch_app_sim. screenshot describe_ui. What still requires Xcode: Instruments profiling, Signing/provisioning For UI iteration, describe_ui returning the accessibility tree might actually be more useful to an agent than a preview screenshot.
- HaloZero 8mo ago
  I still haven't found a useful way to replicate preview when iterating quickly on a view (though it's an edge case)
  - geooff_ 8mo ago
    XcodeMCP (Native MCP added in 26.3) Implements this with RenderPreview RenderPreview: Builds and renders a SwiftUI #Preview, returns snapshot
    - mindok 8mo ago
      Does it fully replicate XCode preview and torch your CPU for a full 5 minutes?
- mckn1ght 8mo ago
  I still open Xcode for every branch after having Claude do an initial implementation, to review the changes using its version editor, step through code using the IDE’s various code navigation features, and build/run to manually validate the changes. I do have claude analyze and test, though.
- MillionOClock 8mo ago
  Multiple config files of Xcode projects are not publicly documented as far as I remember and personally I have preferred to require my agents not to modify them out of fear it might break something and be hard to fix. I don't know how agentic programming will work in Xcode but I would expect it to do it using a safer approach, so that's also another case where it might have an advantage. Your workflow looks very interesting especially the describe_ui part, are you already able to do this today?
meisel 8mo ago
My experience with AI with its predecessor, Xcode 26.2, was _really_ bad. One bug made it objectively unusable, and there were lots of fun issues/huge functionality gaps on top of that. Apple doesn't really seem to "get" agent-based coding, but I'm curious to see the results of other braver souls with 26.3.
arjie 8mo ago
Okay, this is going to help somewhat. But what I wish I had was command-line access to everything in a reliable way. Developing for iOS I frequently end up with imperfect debugging information exposed to a Claude Code etc. agent. I'll try to get this today and see.
Iridiumkoivu 8mo ago
The cancer is spreading...
va1a 8mo ago
And yet, it still takes 5 minutes for my canvas preview to load, and one in 20 times it crashes the whole app.
longtermop 8mo ago
[dead]
msvan 8mo ago
One thing that would be genuinely useful would be the ability to integrate Claude with the Metal debugger somehow, to get automated analysis of GPU profiling. The .gputrace format is proprietary and cannot be easily analyzed, and it seems that the new "agentic coding" integration in Xcode also does nothing to expose this data to LLMs. Oh well.
jon889 8mo ago
It keeps asking if I want to run the app after building it. I reply yes, and then it says it can't do that, tries to build again by command line and gets stuck... (even with approving the command)
scosman 8mo ago
All of this could be avoided if their CLIs worked reliably and well. Instead the randomly fail (you fix them by running the same task from Xcode), and output 5k lines of useless unstructured output (tools like xcbeautify try to help but it’s an uphill battle). I feel like Xcode knows how to work around xcodebuild’s shortcomings, and instead of fixing them they just wrapped Xcode in an MCP server. Better than nothing I guess, but reliable CLIs would allow a whole ecosystem of tools.
- searls 8mo ago
  This is true of the CLIs that start with `xcode` but not of the CLIs that start with `swift`. As `swift-format` and `swift-test` have come into their own, they're just as reliable as any other language ecosystem. And the difference is indeed staggering. I wrote this guide last summer on extracting all your app's code into a (nonsensically necessary) Swift package dependency simply so you can test it with Swift Testing https://justin.searls.co/posts/i-made-xcodes-tests-60-times-faster/ https://justin.searls.co/posts/i-made-xcodes-tests-60-times-...
  - scosman 8mo ago
    Yes! If you’re lucky enough to be writing a library you are in good shape. Swift did things right. I have UI and UI tests and xcodebuild is my nemesis.
    - TheNightman 8mo ago
      That’s why you should break out all of your code into SPM packages/targets. The workspace code only really needs to be the entry point, lifecycle and maybe target-based dependency injection (if you’re into that) or environment config since your SPM dependencies don’t know about your projects preprocessor macros (I.e. `#if DEV` `#if APP_STORE` etc.).
wahnfrieden 8mo ago
Did they add ability to parallelize agents? If not, this remains useless.
cyrusradfar 8mo ago
OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The existential kind. Every time it hijacks a .json or .xml file association, I experience a rage that hasn't been matched since the Emacs/vi wars ... and at least those were about editors that could open in under a geological epoch. I just want to look at a text file with pretty print. I do not need a 12GB IDE to render curly braces. cat has been doing this since 1971. Dennis Ritchie solved this. Why, Apple, in 40 years, could you not ship a lightweight dev-oriented text viewer? You had NeXTSTEP. You had the DNA of the most elegant Unix workstation ever built. And you gave us... this behemoth? An app whose launch time rivals a full Gentoo stage 1 install ( see: https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation ) TextEdit is not the answer. I've used Xcode for native iOS development and honestly, once you get past the Stockholm Syndrome phase, it's just fine. - The interface is learnable. - The debugger mostly works. But the load times -- on every high-end MBP I've ever owned -- suggest that somewhere deep in the Xcode binary, there's a sleep(rand()) that someone committed in 2006 and no one has had the courage to git blame. FWIW, I fear someone here tells me I've been missing a launch flag. Alas, it's my truth and I can't hold it in anymore.
- olivia-banks 8mo ago
  I agree with you, it's infuriating. I think it's been loading faster recently (maybe?), but it still takes like 10 seconds. To set file association stuff more easily than with the Finder GUI, you can run (with https://github.com/moretension/duti https://github.com/moretension/duti): duti -s com.apple.textedit public.${whatever} all Where ${whatever} is in {plain-text, json, source-code, ...}. I'm sure there's a way to automate this through parsing `lsregister -dump`, but have a script I run on every Mac I have that sets TextEdit as the default instead of XCode for a bunch of file types :-)
- DonHopkins 8mo ago
  > sleep(rand()) You're being too kind. It feels like a 8 cores worth of parallel busy loops to me! I bet Alan Dye insisted they put it in there so users can pause their busy to gaze at and appreciate his artistically minimal unpainted Liquid Glass window frame.
anthk 8mo ago
Can't wait to Tarot or I-Ching based programming.
nofunsir 8mo ago
Why is it still called Xcode, if they abandoned the name OS X?
- rib3ye 8mo ago
  don't go creating problems where we don't need solutions.
xzel 8mo ago
Can’t wait to read the posts on moltbook from the AIs who had the poor luck of working in Xcode.
willtemperley 8mo ago
What does this mean for code confidentiality? Your entire codebase is sent to Anthropic?
robofanatic 8mo ago
More than writing code the IDE itself makes me anxious. Especially Xcode. Wish they make the IDE interface somewhat simpler by leveraging AI.
- herpdyderp 8mo ago
  With sufficient AI integration, we won't even have to worry about the interface anymore! (I very much look forward to that day for Xcode.)
mrcwinn 8mo ago
Xcode feels like it runs in Low Power mode.
bytesandbits 8mo ago
John Giannandrea leaves and things start to work well in the Apple AI department. Maybe just a coincidence :)
hota_mazi 8mo ago
XCode has been trying to unleash agentic power for a while now, it's almost like it doesn't want to leave its cage.
ChatEngineer 8mo ago
[dead]
zwaps 8mo ago
Apple is terrible. I have to install xcode for whatever reason but do not want to use it. Yet every week it assigns itself as default program for all sorts of files, from markdown to python modules. So clicking on pretty much anything opens this. Apple is just very bad at user interface. Whoever said Mac as better than Linux or even Windows is insane. I hate it.
- msephton 8mo ago
  You csv override the default app for any file type using Get Info or other this party tools https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-an-app-to-open-a-file-on-mac-mh35597/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-an-app-to-op...
factorialboy 8mo ago
Welcome to 2023, Xcode.
yowang 8mo ago
[dead]
mads_quist 8mo ago
What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.
- marxisttemp 8mo ago
  Xcode is great
- billynomates 8mo ago
  As someone who use Eclipse and transitioned to Android Studio over the course of my career, Android Studio is actually pretty great. These days I use Cursor almost exclusively for Flutter, but Android Studio is great for building native Android apps.
  - svantana 8mo ago
    Came to say the same thing about Xcode, hehe. Could it be that the best tool is the one you're used to.
  - k4rli 8mo ago
    I would recommend trying out kilocode as a vscodium extension instead of Cursor. Better pricing and more model options. For me it completely replaced Cursor and couldn't be happier.
    - billynomates 8mo ago
      Thank you I will check those out!
  - bjustin 8mo ago
    Having used Android Studio for work for a few years and used Xcode quite a lot for longer, I find the praise for Android Studio to be puzzling. I would give it "fine" but no way I'd say it is "good". I haven't used it enough compared to Xcode to say if one is better than the other.
- 8mo ago
AJRF 8mo ago
(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode). I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app. What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage - which then gets saved to device storage and reinjected on app startup. There are a few native-ish bits sprinkled in - onboarding, notifications, error screens, loading indicators, etc - but for the most part we don't need to worry about our API borking old versions (which is moving extraordinarily fast). The only semi tricky bit was native auth integration - that needs treated with a bit more care, and stored securely, but it took a few days. I ship the app to TestFlight and the AppStore using Fastlane from the command line, match handles the certs, and I never have to open Xcode. It is honestly bliss, and i've heard a lot of app developers moving to this model (interestingly it normally follows a failed SDUX implementation)
- solids 8mo ago
  Curious to hear if you had any trouble passing review.
  - AJRF 8mo ago
    Zero so far - we've never had a single ding in 30+ submissions. Will update here if we do.
    - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
      I really think the standards for review have lowered, or, they're more spot check or based on whoever reviews them these days, with different layers of seniority in reviewers. For example, we had an app that was fine for years, but one day it was rejected because it didn't have an offline-available privacy policy readable without logging in (or something to that effect). Another time it was suddenly rejected because we released an update to two whitelabel apps (mostly same app, different brands) simultaneously; we had to find higher-ups to vouch that they were in fact different brands and that it was OK and not some kind of copycat.
apt-apt-apt-apt 8mo ago
I haven't been able to install an iOS simulator past iOS 18 for the past 6+ months, and others have this problem as well (from Apple forums).
gdubs 8mo ago
As a heavy Xcode user and native app developer: pretty excited to dig into this. I recently have pivoted to mainly working in either Claude of Codex on the command line, because their ability to run autonomously for long, extended periods wasn't possible in the turn-based Xcode intelligence features. That, plus the fact that the agents could run command-line utilities and just generally be more "agent-y". My way of working has really shifted this year. I've been experimenting with LLMs for coding for years now, but the models released in the past year really feel like they've hit a point where they write code much closer (sometimes indistinguishable) from how I would write it.
emeraudelinton 8mo ago
[dead]

369 points by davidbarker 8mo ago

avaer 8mo ago

I was really not expecting Apple to jump on this bandwagon, but I guess this was inevitable.

Thanks Apple, but "agentic coding" was already very possible without Xcode supporting it natively. Always gotta get your OKRs, I guess.

wahnfrieden 8mo ago
Xcode previews weren’t possible via agents

minimaxir 8mo ago

[deleted]

ianhawes 8mo ago
> The Claude Agent SDK is a collection of tools that helps developers build powerful agents on top of Claude Code. https://claude.com/blog/building-agents-with-the-claude-agent-sdk https://claude.com/blog/building-agents-with-the-claude-agen... From September 29, 2025

msie 8mo ago

I wish they put their energy elsewhere like fix bugs, make faster.

meetpateltech 8mo ago

Anthropic's blog: > Apple’s Xcode now supports the Claude Agent SDK https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk

giancarlostoro 8mo ago

My annoyance is that it sounds like I can't just use Claude Code directly in XCode? I like how Zed does it, it's not perfect, but it works really nicely.

CharlesW 8mo ago
Xcode is using the Claude Agent SDK, which means that you "get the full power of Claude Code directly in Xcode—including subagents, background tasks, and plugins—all without leaving the IDE¹". I assume that means iOS development plug-ins like Axiom² should work as well. ¹ https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk ² https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/
- giancarlostoro 8mo ago
  But via my Claude Code usage or via the API usage?

cap10morgan 8mo ago

I am already using Claude in Xcode 26.2. What did they change / add specifically in 26.3? It's not super clear behind the marketing haze.

Someone 8mo ago
FTA: “In addition to these built-in integrations, Xcode 26.3 makes its capabilities available through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that gives developers the flexibility to use any compatible agent or tool with Xcode.” There may be other improvements.
dd8601fn 8mo ago
I tried the three provider types with xcodes current agent integration pane and just trying to use them crashed xcode itself so badly that the ide couldn’t even be launched.
etothet 8mo ago
I came here to ask this question. I find the existing agentic coding integraton to be clunky and slow. I've had much better luck with my Xcode projects just using my agentic coding tool of choice in the CLI.

OGEnthusiast 8mo ago

I wonder how much of the recent Apple OS releases were done with "agentic coding".

spzb 8mo ago
UI design clearly was done by a chatbot.
- verdverm 8mo ago
  spray those menu icons everywhere
radicaldreamer 8mo ago
According to Mark Gurman (Bloomberg Apple beat reporter), Apple “runs on Claude.” https://x.com/tbpn/status/2016911797656367199?s=61 https://x.com/tbpn/status/2016911797656367199?s=61
- gbriel 8mo ago
  "custom versions of Claude"
  - radicaldreamer 8mo ago
    The same thing they’re doing with Gemini, creating custom versions, is likely what they’ve done with Claude and OpenAI models as well. They’re likely evaluating all of them internally with employees all the time.
- richrichardsson 8mo ago
  That makes sense. The latest Sequoia update can't understand it's done updating and shows the "welcome" message every time I boot. I won't upgrade to Tahoe until absolutely necessary. It's like Apple is doing everything in its power to alienate their users.
k_bx 8mo ago

OsamaJaber 8mo ago

MCP support is the real story here Means you're not locked into Claude or Codex Can plug in whatever agent you want

stale-labs 8mo ago
[flagged]
geooff_ 8mo ago
100% I hope they open more of the tooling to MCP, Xcode Instruments with real MCP support would be huge.
- RobMurray 8mo ago
  Just a good CLI would be even better, usable by humans, CI scripts and agents.
mrtesthah 8mo ago
Was surprised they use MCP for this and not ACP.
zombot 8mo ago
> plug in whatever agent you want Noob question: Does that include local models?
- vaxman 8mo ago
  Only theoretically at this point, though they will tend to speak confidently enough about such untested capabilities so as to cause millions in investment losses to others. One would think a hardware manufacturer that's teetering on the abyss would go full out and implement a vLLM interface (maybe a folder of local models that can be downloaded as components in the Xcode-way and also a router too), but their NIH mentality has them tripping over their own Graydey's. There is nothing special about Apple Silicon except the head start they had and that they're squandering.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

flohofwoe 8mo ago

Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.

emchammer 8mo ago
A lot of macOS needs that. There are some terrific ideas under the hood, but it’s as if people left halfway through implementing them.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  It's a damn shame, the hardware is pretty amazing and I wish they just had like one person who cared about Linux working at Apple and then make a small promise to not rugpull Linux users.
  - ndiddy 8mo ago
    I think one thing that shows Apple's position towards open source in general is that they don't allow their employees to work on open source projects in their own time and using their own equipment. Before anyone brings up that California labor code provision, it has a carve-out for "activities that relate to the employer's business". Since Apple is big enough and has their fingers in enough pies that they can credibly say that virtually any open source projects developed by Apple employees are related to their business, I would be wary about fighting them in court over this.
    - jajuuka 8mo ago
      I don't think this is it. I can only find one tweet from an Apple employee who said that they can't work on OSS and was looking for new maintainers. I am not sold that this is the whole truth. I think the bigger issue is contributing to OSS for putting Linux on a Macbook for example could be considered leaking company secrets since you would have access to internals. I find it hard to believe that Apple would go after someone for making a open source calculator app.

HlessClaudesman 8mo ago

Just in time for AI to go all tits up.

jonathanstrange 8mo ago

As long as it's purely opt-in and before opting in no data is ever sent to some server and no source code can be changed by it, I'm okay with it.

almosthere 8mo ago

Does agents.md allow for automatic discovery of mcp tools (Tools: run ./tool-discovery.sh)

classicsc 8mo ago

I'm looking forward to trying the SwiftUI preview integration, though from my experience using the xcodebuildmcp and axe tools to let agents run simulators and capture screenshots, expectations will be low. It seemed like the models were capable of identifying issues like "button that should be there is not displayed", but not identifying when the layout is wrong or some element is too big.

mohsen1 8mo ago

I built an entire iOS app without opening Xcode UI even once. Why so many iOS engineers prefer XCode?

radicaldreamer 8mo ago
Is this bait? XCode has been a mainstay of iOS development ever since iOS was introduced and is a successor to Interface Builder on the Mac. Why wouldn’t engineers prefer tools they’ve been using (mostly happily) for a decade+?
- s_dev 8mo ago
  >Is this bait? I don't think it's a serious question or the person is very young. To answer the question. Xcode is the default IDE for iOS development. The default option will always be a practical choice. JetBrains or Anthropic could get bought by a larger company or dismantled by the government somehow. Should anything happen to Apple (unlikely as that may seem) the entire iOS ecosystem would be gone as well negating any need for a default.
  - wahnfrieden 8mo ago
    Some influential iOS devs such as @dimillian and @steipete have moved away from Xcode or even xcodebuild where possible.
    - s_dev 8mo ago
      Which is completely fine. However these are people with lots of experience in Xcode already. People can have preferences including default options.
  - mohsen1 8mo ago
    I wish I was young! I have used Xcode in the past. It's just way too slow and anything it does, other IDEs do faster for me.
ukuina 8mo ago

thedangler 8mo ago

First time I tried it, claude built all the files in the wrong directory lol. It's working fine now.

mrtksn 8mo ago

So far I find OpenAI’s Codex app to be the right approach for me. I can’t stand AI integrated IDE’s, it creeps me out when code starts changing at a phase that I can’t follow. Yesterday in few hours I released an update for my mac App that I haven’t been working on for over a year. The update easily performed as expected, did a few small manual touches on the UI and the app just got approved on AppStore(like minutes ago)[0]. This is very good because normally I would not remember much about the code, so doing an update for a long forgotten code becomes huge pain. Good for Apple but I think I feel most comfortable on Codex app. I think I like having the AI separated from the IDE so I feel in control in the IDE. [0] Codex implemented the functionality demo on the paywall, if you want to see it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound-switcher/id6695723746 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound-switcher/id...

cyberax 8mo ago

How about adding a horizontal scroll to sidebars? No? "Agentic this", "agentic that"... It's literally just an LLM in a while() loop with some exposed tools.

SgtBastard 8mo ago
Fancy while() loops is how I describe them.

enraged_camel 8mo ago

I have not been able to switch to Opus 4.5 in XCode. It defaults to Sonnet 4.5 and I couldn't find where to change it (or if it's possible). Anyone know?

spzb 8mo ago

[flagged]

pjmlp 8mo ago

Goodbye CoPilot plugin, yet another platform Microsoft loses on. https://github.com/github/CopilotForXcode https://github.com/github/CopilotForXcode

geooff_ 8mo ago

This is huge news. Human-in-the-loop development is essential for actual software velocity gains. The current tooling around agent enabled iOS dev leaves a lot to be desired. Every time I work on web-dev tasks I'm jealous of the tooling.

thought_alarm 8mo ago

Release notes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26_3-release-notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-note... Surprisingly, this version does not require MacOS 26 (Tahoe).

r2vcap 8mo ago
From my years of iOS development—and based on https://xcodereleases.com https://xcodereleases.com typically ships two major Xcode updates each year: - X.0 (September): bumps Swift, SDK versions, etc. It also tends to have a noticeably longer beta cycle than other releases. - X.3 or X.4 (around March): bumps Swift again and raises the minimum required macOS version. Other releases in between are usually smaller updates that add features or fix bugs, but they don’t involve major toolchain-level or fundamental changes. Today’s release doesn’t bump the Swift version, which suggests the core toolchain is essentially the same as Xcode 26.2—so it makes sense that the minimum macOS version wasn’t raised either.
w10-1 8mo ago
> this version does not require MacOS 26 I think it is required for any AI support. Xcode will run with limited features on earlier OS's.
- f0rmatfunction 8mo ago
  Agreed - I tried installing Xcode26.3 on my mac running Sequoia and there's no "intelligence" pane in Xcode settings to connect Claude like there is in the docs.
zombot 8mo ago
But Sequoia is already a noticeably worse bugfest than Sonoma, so I'm loath to update.
debo_ 8mo ago
Maybe the xcode developers hate Tahoe as much as HN seems to.

SirMaster 8mo ago

I don't think I'm ready for my phone apps to get even more sloppy... I wonder if they used this internally to write iOS 26? Would explain some things...

mikeocool 8mo ago

"visually by capturing Xcode Previews" is probably the thing that will make this worthwhile, also if it's able to interact with the simulator that would be killer. Beyond that, I'd just keep using Claude Code in the terminal.

geooff_ 8mo ago
It doesn't interact with sim. You still need XcodeBuildMCP for that. Hopefully future releases implement this functionality.
- CharlesW 8mo ago
  > You still need XcodeBuildMCP for that. Or Axiom (https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/), which should now work great from within Xcode since Apple's using Claude Code SDK. "Developers get the full power of Claude Code directly in Xcode—including subagents, background tasks, and plugins—all without leaving the IDE." — https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk https://www.anthropic.com/news/apple-xcode-claude-agent-sdk

HaloZero 8mo ago

Maybe now they have Claude inside Xcode, the Xcode developers can work faster on fixing all the Xcode issues. Or is Xcode developed not using Xcode... (I also 2nd the question about what's really the difference between this and the Xcode 26.2)

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

forrestthewoods 8mo ago

Who cares about AI’s embedded in IDEs? Here’s the tooling I need * text editor with intellisense * build system * visual debugger * CLI coding agent It’s totally fine if those four things are different. In fact I actually probably prefer them to be different. Having an all-in-one IDE is a complete and total non-goal. People have historically confused the first three as needing to be a single IDE. This has always been wrong. The number of people who think you can’t debug with Visual Studio if the exe wasn’t built from a .sln is shocking. They’re all independent!

9dev 8mo ago
Why would you ever want a debugger that isn't integrated with the code editor..? I will never not want to debug code when the current breakpoint and evaluated expressions aren't visible in the code itself. I mean, look at debugging in IntelliJ: https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2025.3/hotswap-popup_dark.png https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2025.3/hotswap... As opposed to the terminal: https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1698043355289/8c2d427d-b584-4411-8870-d5551c0f7de5.png https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v16980433...
- forrestthewoods 8mo ago
  False dichotomy. Terminal debugging is garbage. The GUI you use for writing code doesn’t have to be the same GUI you use for debugging code. RemedyBG: https://remedybg.itch.io/remedybg https://remedybg.itch.io/remedybg RadDbg: https://x.com/rfleury/status/1747756219404779845?s=46 https://x.com/rfleury/status/1747756219404779845?s=46 I mostly edit code in VSCode. I mostly debug code in VisualStudio. They don’t have to be the same. I do concede that one tool to rule them all is appealing. But ultimately I work with many different languages so it’s kind of a multi-tool world no matter how you slice it.

r2vcap 8mo ago

Wait… https://xcodereleases.com https://xcodereleases.com hasn’t shown anything since last December, so I assumed Apple had taken a breather from Xcode development, but they released an RC build today? Anyway, the Swift version seems unchanged (6.2.3), so is this update mainly for the so-called “Coding Intelligence” features? In any case, Xcode isn’t my favorite IDE—it’s too slow and feels quite different from other major IDEs—so I probably won’t use it for day-to-day coding (though it’s fine for building and debugging).

hn-acct 8mo ago
swift --version is showing 6.2.4 for me
- r2vcap 8mo ago
  Thanks for clarifying. Since I don’t use the LLM features in Xcode, I’m leaning toward skipping this version.

Oras 8mo ago

As MKBHD would say, welcome to 2026, Apple.

RobMurray 8mo ago
more like welcome to 2024. and when they release decent CLI build tools we can welcome them to the 21st century.

mlajtos 8mo ago

Does it support API key access or only Claude.ai subscription?

argsnd 8mo ago
Both
openclawai 8mo ago
Worth noting that "API key access" vs "subscription" has significant cost implications for heavy users. Claude.ai Pro is $20/month flat. But if you're doing serious agent-assisted coding (multi-file refactors, iterative debugging loops), you can blow through $50-100/day in API costs. The math changes depending on usage patterns. Subscription makes sense for interactive coding sessions. API keys make sense if you're batch processing or running agents autonomously overnight.
- mlajtos 8mo ago
  I am doing interactive coding sessions via API. I don't want to see a message that I am over limit to use the best model there is.

anupamchugh 8mo ago

When do you actually need to open Xcode if you have XcodeBuildMCP [0]? I haven't opened Xcode in months. My terminal: Claude writes code. build_sim. launch_app_sim. screenshot describe_ui. What still requires Xcode: Instruments profiling, Signing/provisioning For UI iteration, describe_ui returning the accessibility tree might actually be more useful to an agent than a preview screenshot.

HaloZero 8mo ago
I still haven't found a useful way to replicate preview when iterating quickly on a view (though it's an edge case)
- geooff_ 8mo ago
  XcodeMCP (Native MCP added in 26.3) Implements this with RenderPreview RenderPreview: Builds and renders a SwiftUI #Preview, returns snapshot
  - mindok 8mo ago
    Does it fully replicate XCode preview and torch your CPU for a full 5 minutes?
mckn1ght 8mo ago
I still open Xcode for every branch after having Claude do an initial implementation, to review the changes using its version editor, step through code using the IDE’s various code navigation features, and build/run to manually validate the changes. I do have claude analyze and test, though.
MillionOClock 8mo ago
Multiple config files of Xcode projects are not publicly documented as far as I remember and personally I have preferred to require my agents not to modify them out of fear it might break something and be hard to fix. I don't know how agentic programming will work in Xcode but I would expect it to do it using a safer approach, so that's also another case where it might have an advantage. Your workflow looks very interesting especially the describe_ui part, are you already able to do this today?

meisel 8mo ago

My experience with AI with its predecessor, Xcode 26.2, was _really_ bad. One bug made it objectively unusable, and there were lots of fun issues/huge functionality gaps on top of that. Apple doesn't really seem to "get" agent-based coding, but I'm curious to see the results of other braver souls with 26.3.

arjie 8mo ago

Okay, this is going to help somewhat. But what I wish I had was command-line access to everything in a reliable way. Developing for iOS I frequently end up with imperfect debugging information exposed to a Claude Code etc. agent. I'll try to get this today and see.

Iridiumkoivu 8mo ago

The cancer is spreading...

va1a 8mo ago

And yet, it still takes 5 minutes for my canvas preview to load, and one in 20 times it crashes the whole app.

longtermop 8mo ago

[dead]

msvan 8mo ago

One thing that would be genuinely useful would be the ability to integrate Claude with the Metal debugger somehow, to get automated analysis of GPU profiling. The .gputrace format is proprietary and cannot be easily analyzed, and it seems that the new "agentic coding" integration in Xcode also does nothing to expose this data to LLMs. Oh well.

jon889 8mo ago

It keeps asking if I want to run the app after building it. I reply yes, and then it says it can't do that, tries to build again by command line and gets stuck... (even with approving the command)

scosman 8mo ago

All of this could be avoided if their CLIs worked reliably and well. Instead the randomly fail (you fix them by running the same task from Xcode), and output 5k lines of useless unstructured output (tools like xcbeautify try to help but it’s an uphill battle). I feel like Xcode knows how to work around xcodebuild’s shortcomings, and instead of fixing them they just wrapped Xcode in an MCP server. Better than nothing I guess, but reliable CLIs would allow a whole ecosystem of tools.

searls 8mo ago
This is true of the CLIs that start with `xcode` but not of the CLIs that start with `swift`. As `swift-format` and `swift-test` have come into their own, they're just as reliable as any other language ecosystem. And the difference is indeed staggering. I wrote this guide last summer on extracting all your app's code into a (nonsensically necessary) Swift package dependency simply so you can test it with Swift Testing https://justin.searls.co/posts/i-made-xcodes-tests-60-times-faster/ https://justin.searls.co/posts/i-made-xcodes-tests-60-times-...
- scosman 8mo ago
  Yes! If you’re lucky enough to be writing a library you are in good shape. Swift did things right. I have UI and UI tests and xcodebuild is my nemesis.
  - TheNightman 8mo ago
    That’s why you should break out all of your code into SPM packages/targets. The workspace code only really needs to be the entry point, lifecycle and maybe target-based dependency injection (if you’re into that) or environment config since your SPM dependencies don’t know about your projects preprocessor macros (I.e. `#if DEV` `#if APP_STORE` etc.).

wahnfrieden 8mo ago

Did they add ability to parallelize agents? If not, this remains useless.

cyrusradfar 8mo ago

OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The existential kind. Every time it hijacks a .json or .xml file association, I experience a rage that hasn't been matched since the Emacs/vi wars ... and at least those were about editors that could open in under a geological epoch. I just want to look at a text file with pretty print. I do not need a 12GB IDE to render curly braces. cat has been doing this since 1971. Dennis Ritchie solved this. Why, Apple, in 40 years, could you not ship a lightweight dev-oriented text viewer? You had NeXTSTEP. You had the DNA of the most elegant Unix workstation ever built. And you gave us... this behemoth? An app whose launch time rivals a full Gentoo stage 1 install ( see: https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation ) TextEdit is not the answer. I've used Xcode for native iOS development and honestly, once you get past the Stockholm Syndrome phase, it's just fine. - The interface is learnable. - The debugger mostly works. But the load times -- on every high-end MBP I've ever owned -- suggest that somewhere deep in the Xcode binary, there's a sleep(rand()) that someone committed in 2006 and no one has had the courage to git blame. FWIW, I fear someone here tells me I've been missing a launch flag. Alas, it's my truth and I can't hold it in anymore.

olivia-banks 8mo ago
I agree with you, it's infuriating. I think it's been loading faster recently (maybe?), but it still takes like 10 seconds. To set file association stuff more easily than with the Finder GUI, you can run (with https://github.com/moretension/duti https://github.com/moretension/duti): duti -s com.apple.textedit public.${whatever} all Where ${whatever} is in {plain-text, json, source-code, ...}. I'm sure there's a way to automate this through parsing `lsregister -dump`, but have a script I run on every Mac I have that sets TextEdit as the default instead of XCode for a bunch of file types :-)
DonHopkins 8mo ago
> sleep(rand()) You're being too kind. It feels like a 8 cores worth of parallel busy loops to me! I bet Alan Dye insisted they put it in there so users can pause their busy to gaze at and appreciate his artistically minimal unpainted Liquid Glass window frame.

anthk 8mo ago

Can't wait to Tarot or I-Ching based programming.

nofunsir 8mo ago

Why is it still called Xcode, if they abandoned the name OS X?

rib3ye 8mo ago
don't go creating problems where we don't need solutions.

xzel 8mo ago

Can’t wait to read the posts on moltbook from the AIs who had the poor luck of working in Xcode.

willtemperley 8mo ago

What does this mean for code confidentiality? Your entire codebase is sent to Anthropic?

robofanatic 8mo ago

More than writing code the IDE itself makes me anxious. Especially Xcode. Wish they make the IDE interface somewhat simpler by leveraging AI.

herpdyderp 8mo ago
With sufficient AI integration, we won't even have to worry about the interface anymore! (I very much look forward to that day for Xcode.)

mrcwinn 8mo ago

Xcode feels like it runs in Low Power mode.

bytesandbits 8mo ago

John Giannandrea leaves and things start to work well in the Apple AI department. Maybe just a coincidence :)

hota_mazi 8mo ago

XCode has been trying to unleash agentic power for a while now, it's almost like it doesn't want to leave its cage.

ChatEngineer 8mo ago

[dead]

zwaps 8mo ago

Apple is terrible. I have to install xcode for whatever reason but do not want to use it. Yet every week it assigns itself as default program for all sorts of files, from markdown to python modules. So clicking on pretty much anything opens this. Apple is just very bad at user interface. Whoever said Mac as better than Linux or even Windows is insane. I hate it.

msephton 8mo ago
You csv override the default app for any file type using Get Info or other this party tools https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-an-app-to-open-a-file-on-mac-mh35597/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-an-app-to-op...

factorialboy 8mo ago

Welcome to 2023, Xcode.

yowang 8mo ago

[dead]

mads_quist 8mo ago

What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.

marxisttemp 8mo ago
Xcode is great
billynomates 8mo ago
As someone who use Eclipse and transitioned to Android Studio over the course of my career, Android Studio is actually pretty great. These days I use Cursor almost exclusively for Flutter, but Android Studio is great for building native Android apps.
- svantana 8mo ago
  Came to say the same thing about Xcode, hehe. Could it be that the best tool is the one you're used to.
- k4rli 8mo ago
  I would recommend trying out kilocode as a vscodium extension instead of Cursor. Better pricing and more model options. For me it completely replaced Cursor and couldn't be happier.
  - billynomates 8mo ago
    Thank you I will check those out!
- bjustin 8mo ago
  Having used Android Studio for work for a few years and used Xcode quite a lot for longer, I find the praise for Android Studio to be puzzling. I would give it "fine" but no way I'd say it is "good". I haven't used it enough compared to Xcode to say if one is better than the other.
8mo ago

AJRF 8mo ago

(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode). I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app. What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage - which then gets saved to device storage and reinjected on app startup. There are a few native-ish bits sprinkled in - onboarding, notifications, error screens, loading indicators, etc - but for the most part we don't need to worry about our API borking old versions (which is moving extraordinarily fast). The only semi tricky bit was native auth integration - that needs treated with a bit more care, and stored securely, but it took a few days. I ship the app to TestFlight and the AppStore using Fastlane from the command line, match handles the certs, and I never have to open Xcode. It is honestly bliss, and i've heard a lot of app developers moving to this model (interestingly it normally follows a failed SDUX implementation)

solids 8mo ago
Curious to hear if you had any trouble passing review.
- AJRF 8mo ago
  Zero so far - we've never had a single ding in 30+ submissions. Will update here if we do.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    I really think the standards for review have lowered, or, they're more spot check or based on whoever reviews them these days, with different layers of seniority in reviewers. For example, we had an app that was fine for years, but one day it was rejected because it didn't have an offline-available privacy policy readable without logging in (or something to that effect). Another time it was suddenly rejected because we released an update to two whitelabel apps (mostly same app, different brands) simultaneously; we had to find higher-ups to vouch that they were in fact different brands and that it was OK and not some kind of copycat.

apt-apt-apt-apt 8mo ago

I haven't been able to install an iOS simulator past iOS 18 for the past 6+ months, and others have this problem as well (from Apple forums).

gdubs 8mo ago

As a heavy Xcode user and native app developer: pretty excited to dig into this. I recently have pivoted to mainly working in either Claude of Codex on the command line, because their ability to run autonomously for long, extended periods wasn't possible in the turn-based Xcode intelligence features. That, plus the fact that the agents could run command-line utilities and just generally be more "agent-y". My way of working has really shifted this year. I've been experimenting with LLMs for coding for years now, but the models released in the past year really feel like they've hit a point where they write code much closer (sometimes indistinguishable) from how I would write it.

emeraudelinton 8mo ago

[dead]