New Swift Playgrounds 4.1 lets you make Mac apps with SwiftUI

Apple on Tuesday released major updates to Swift Playgrounds, its app designed to teach programming newcomers how to write software using Apple’s Swift programming language.

Swift Playgrounds 4.1 is available for free for the iPad and Mac. Version 4.1 now allows users to create macOS apps with SwiftUI, but the users must be running Swift Playgrounds on a Mac running macOS Monterey 12.4, which was released on Monday. Here are the release notes with details on the new features. 

• Build Mac apps with SwiftUI (requires macOS 12.4 or later)• Guided walkthroughs teach SwiftUI app building basics• App Preview shows live updates as you make changes to your app• Apps built with Swift Playgrounds run and install to the Applications folder• App Store Connect integration lets you upload your finished app to the App Store (requires Apple Developer Program account)• Smart, inline code suggestions help you write code quickly and accurately• Project-wide search finds results across multiple files• Snippets Library provides hundreds of SwiftUI controls, symbols, and colors• Swift Package support lets you include publicly available code to enhance your apps• App Projects make it easy to move projects to Xcode and back

Development Tools, Software Development