Swift 4.2 is a major update that enhances compile times, debugging, the standard library, and moves closer to binary compatibility, while maintaining source compatibility with Swift 4 and 4.1 but marking the last release to support Swift 3 compatibility.
The Core Motion framework in Swift simplifies access to iOS and watchOS device sensors, enabling innovative user interactions beyond touch by leveraging a dedicated motion coprocessor for efficient accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data processing.
The Core Motion framework’s CMMotionActivityManager on iOS and watchOS uses a device’s motion coprocessor to process sensor data from accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, determining user activities like walking, running, cycling, automotive travel, or being stationary with varying confidence levels.
NSDataDetector finds dates, links, phone numbers, addresses, and transit details in natural language text. It is a subclass of NSRegularExpression.
Asset catalogs in Xcode let you store not just images but also data files like JSON. This helps apps load faster on first launch by avoiding network calls.
Apple’s Natural Language framework (iOS 12+) finally lets developers use the same powerful language-detection technology that powers Siri and system features.
Automatic Strong Passwords (iOS 12 / macOS Mojave) let Safari and your app generate truly random, high-entropy passwords that actually satisfy the site’s rules, no more “password too weak” after AutoFill.
The Swift community continues to expand, with developers increasingly relying on ecosystem projects to streamline app development for specific tasks. To foster better interaction, Swift Forums has introduced a new top-level category called Related Projects.
Swift.org has expanded its continuous integration testing system to include community-hosted nodes for additional platforms.
Swift 4.1 reimplements implicitly unwrapped optionals (IUOs) so they act as regular optionals with a flag that allows automatic unwrapping when needed, rather than as a distinct type.
Apple released Swift 4.1 as a minor update that maintains source compatibility with Swift 4.0. It adds generics features such as conditional conformance and synthesised Equatable and Hashable support.
Swift 4.2 serves as a step towards ABI stability in Swift 5, incorporating ABI changes for performance, bug fixes, and targeted improvements to compile-time speed.
Swift 4.1 adds a new optimisation mode called -Osize. This mode helps reduce code size by 5 to 30 percent in some projects.
The Swift project has moved its main discussions from mailing lists to Swift Forums. The old mailing lists are shut down and archived, with their content imported into the new system.
Swift 4.1 adds conditional conformances, which let generic types like Array and Optional conform to protocols such as Equatable or Hashable only when their elements do.
Swift 4.1 is a source-compatible update to Swift 4.0 that adds minor language enhancements, improves the Swift Package Manager and Linux support, and includes quality fixes to the compiler and standard library, but it lacks binary compatibility due to ABI stabilisation work for Swift 5.
Swift has features that let you set expectations in your code. If these are not met at runtime, the program stops.
Swift 4 adds new methods and initialisers to dictionaries and sets that simplify tasks like grouping, filtering, and transforming data.
Apple released Swift 4 as a major update that builds on Swift 3 with better robustness, stability, source compatibility, standard library improvements, and new features like archival and serialisation.
Xcode 9 features a new refactoring engine that transforms Swift code either locally in one file or globally across files and languages.
Swift 4 redesigned the Package.swift manifest API in the Package Manager to make it simpler and match the design rules.
Apple announced a new Swift source compatibility test suite to help keep source compatibility in future releases.
Apple released Swift 3.1 as a minor update that keeps source compatibility with Swift 3.0.
Swift 4 is a major release set for fall 2017. It focuses on source stability for Swift 3 code and essential features for binary stability, with big updates to generics and the String type.
Build times in Xcode projects that mix Objective-C and Swift rise due to the Swift compiler re-processing large bridging headers for each Swift file.