We're closing 2025 with a week for the history books. Swift celebrates a decade as an open source project, Apple publishes research that turns photos into 3D worlds in under a second, video games get first-class treatment with a full day of training from Cupertino, and Japan joins the club of countries where the iPhone allows alternative app stores. An intense week, one of those that reminds you why we're still here.
A Decade of Open Source
On December 19th, the traditional Swift monthly recap was published, but this time it came loaded with nostalgia. Exactly ten years ago, Apple announced that Swift would become open source software. What started as an experiment has grown into an ecosystem of more than 70 repositories with hundreds of weekly contributors.
The recap highlights the year's milestones: Swift 6.2 with its more approachable concurrency, WebAssembly support, deep C++ interoperability, and memory safety improvements that are redefining what it means to write secure code.
But perhaps the most striking aspect is the expansion to new platforms. Swift is no longer just Apple's language: it runs on Android, Windows, FreeBSD, embedded systems, and even on a ten-year-old Pebble Time Round. The project has matured to the point where Amazon has announced built-in support in Amazon Linux and official adoption of the AWS Lambda Runtime.
On the Swift Evolution front, three proposals deserve attention:
- SE-0497: Function definition visibility control (completed)
- SE-0493: Allow async calls in defer bodies (completed)
- SE-0501: HTML coverage reports for Swift Package Manager (under review)
Speaking of expansion, on December 18th Apple published Exploring the Swift SDK for Android, announcing new Swift 6.3 previews with daily SDK builds for Android. The SDK now supports multiple Android API levels using the familiar @available attribute and #available checks, exactly like on Apple platforms. Apps like Spark, flowkey, MediQuo, and Naturitas are already running in production with millions of downloads.
From a Photo to a World
If anything set the internet on fire this week, it was SHARP. On December 17th, Apple published research that seems like magic: a model that reconstructs photorealistic 3D scenes from a single photograph in less than a second.
SHARP (Sharp Monocular View Synthesis) uses Gaussian Splatting—millions of tiny blocks of color and light positioned in space—to recreate the scene. Unlike previous methods that required dozens or hundreds of images from different angles, SHARP does it in a single neural network pass.
The numbers are impressive:
- Synthesis time: 3 orders of magnitude faster than previous models
- Rendering: over 100 FPS on standard GPU
- LPIPS: 25-34% improvement
- DISTS: 21-43% improvement
The community wasted no time experimenting. One user shared:
"I just ran Apple's new SHARP model locally and watched my photos turn into Gaussian Splats in seconds, then stepped inside them on Vision Pro"
The model has its limitations—it can only reconstruct nearby views from the original vantage point, it can't "invent" what it doesn't see—but the implications for Vision Pro and immersive experiences are enormous. And best of all: Apple released it as open source on GitHub.
But SHARP doesn't come alone. On December 16th, UniGen-1.5 was unveiled, a multimodal model that does something that previously required three different models: understand, generate, and edit images. A single model for everything.
The key innovation is Edit Instruction Alignment, a new post-training step that aligns editing instructions with the target image's semantics. In benchmarks, UniGen-1.5 achieves 0.89 on GenEval and 86.83 on DPG-Bench, outperforming recent models like BAGEL and BLIP3o. For image editing, its 4.31 score on ImgEdit is comparable to proprietary models like GPT-Image-1.
And let's not forget BED-LLM (Dec 19), which proposes using Bayesian experimental design for LLMs to gather information more intelligently, and DarkDiff (Dec 16), which applies diffusion models to improve photography in extremely low-light conditions. Apple isn't just researching: they're defining the future.
Learn from Those Who Know
If 2025 caught you without time for training, 2026 can be your year. The Swift Mastery Program 2026 is now accepting registrations: an intensive training where you won't just learn the tools, but understand the why behind every decision.
In a world where AI agents generate code with ease, those who understand the fundamentals will always be one step ahead. The SMP isn't just another course: it's the program that will turn you into the developer companies need, capable of supervising, correcting, and directing the code that machines generate.
Press Start: Apple Gets Serious About Games
If you develop video games—or have ever considered it—this week has been a feast. Apple published Press Start: Game development on Apple platforms, a full day of training streamed from the Developer Center in Cupertino.
The main session, available on Apple Developer Videos, includes talks on:
- Chart your game's course to Apple platforms (18:26)
- Level up with Apple game technologies (19:17)
- Bring your PC and console games to Mac (19:53)
- Design great interfaces for handheld games (19:59)
- Explore power, performance, and scale on iPhone/iPad (15:43)
- Transform your game with Apple Vision Pro (27:33)
There's also a fascinating case study: Discover how DREDGE was reimagined for Apple platforms with Black Salt Games, where they share how they adapted their indie hit—winner of the App Store Award 2025—to Apple devices.
But the content isn't the only thing new. The What's New in Games page reveals the technical updates:
Metal 4 arrives with an optimized API for Apple Silicon, lower command encoding overhead, and something that changes the rules: native Machine Learning support with tensors directly in the shader language. You can now run large neural networks or do inline inference in your shaders.
Game Porting Toolkit 3 expands the supported instruction set, improves sparse resources, adds MetalFX support (upscaling, denoising, frame interpolation), and enables remote debugging from Visual Studio on Mac.
The new GameSave Framework automatically syncs save data across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro. Your players can continue where they left off, on any device.
And the star: Apple Games app, a new unified app that comes pre-installed and serves as the single destination to discover, launch, and play. Games appear automatically, with Game Center and In-App Events integration.
For those working with virtual reality, there's support for the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller on visionOS with 6 degrees of freedom and vibration. And if you develop for touch screens, the new On-screen controls API makes it easy to create native touch controls for iPhone and iPad.
Liquid Glass for Everyone
Adapting your app to Apple's new design language doesn't have to be a leap of faith. This week several showcases were published where real developers share how they did it:
- Showcase: Apps integrating Liquid Glass (116:17) — Lowe's, American Airlines, and Sky Guide share their experiences, followed by a discussion with Apple design team leaders.
- Liquid Glass showcase: CNN (9:24)
- Liquid Glass showcase: Slack (12:28)
- Liquid Glass showcase: Tide Guide (10:52)
- Liquid Glass showcase: LTK (9:33)
And if you prefer learning by doing, the Code-along: Start building with Swift and SwiftUI (96:09) guides you step by step to build a complete iOS interface using SwiftUI and SwiftData.
From Tokyo to the World
On December 17th, Apple announced significant changes to iOS in Japan. To comply with the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA), starting with iOS 26.2 developers in Japan can:
- Distribute apps on alternative marketplaces
- Operate their own marketplaces
- Process payments for digital goods and services outside of Apple In-App Purchase
Japan becomes the 29th country with access to alternative app stores on iPhone. Users can also configure third-party voice assistants to activate with the side button, and there are new choice screens for default browser and search engine.
Epic Games, however, has confirmed that Fortnite won't return to iOS in Japan because they consider the fees still too high. The battle continues.
In other corporate news, Apple launched the Mini Apps Partner Program, aimed at developers hosting HTML5 mini apps within native applications. The program offers an 85% commission (versus the standard 70%) on qualified in-app purchases, as long as the mini apps meet technical and privacy requirements.
And to close with something beautiful: CapWords won the 2025 Apple Design Award in the Delight and Fun category. This language learning app uses AI to turn photos of everyday objects into animated stickers that teach vocabulary. Developed by a three-person team in Beijing, it was born from a conversation between founder Ace Lee and his 3-year-old daughter. Sometimes the best ideas come from the simplest questions.
Community Tutorials
The Swift community doesn't rest even during the holidays:
Natalia Panferova at Nil Coalescing gives us Animating SF Symbols in SwiftUI (Dec 18), a tutorial on how to add animations and transitions to SF Symbols icons without custom animation logic.
Antoine van der Lee at SwiftLee reflects on 9 months of a Swift Concurrency Course (Dec 15), analyzing what he's learned after launching his Swift Concurrency & Swift 6 course in March.
And in iOS Dev Weekly #737, Dave Verwer highlights several interesting resources: how to use SwiftUI previews in the Zed editor, a tutorial for running Swift on Raspberry Pi, and Tessera, a new Swift package for creating repeating patterns in app backgrounds.
And That's About It
Before we say goodbye, two audio recommendations for the holidays:
On Apple Coding Daily, don't miss Un iPhone ROBADO desvela los 40 productos SECRETOS de Apple (in Spanish). A sold prototype iPhone has leaked information about more than 40 secret products: foldable iPhone, home robots, AI glasses, a €699 MacBook... The biggest leak in Apple's history, told in full detail.
And on Apple Coding, we have an essential conversation with Antonio Leiva (in Spanish), Google Developer Expert in Android and AI specialist. The conversation revolves around how artificial intelligence is transforming professional roles in software development. The title says it all: "AI Made the Senior Developer Disappear". Spoiler: it's not as dramatic as it sounds, but there's plenty to reflect on.
It's been an extraordinary year. Swift celebrates a decade open to the world, Apple publishes research that seemed like science fiction, video games get the treatment they deserve, and the community keeps creating first-class content. 2026 promises to be even better.
And before we go, a recommendation: if you want to keep learning Swift between newsletters, don't miss Swift Pills, the blog by our colleague Arturo Rivas. He continuously publishes tutorials and guides on Swift development that will come in very handy.
If you'd like to leave us a comment or tell us anything, we're on the usual channels.
See you soon, and until then: cheers and happy native coding.
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