WWDC 2024 launched over a week ago and my hands had been itchy wanting to dig into it. Hey not everyone is lucky to be sent in - to spend a week at the conference! 😔 So, for me, Youtube is my friend. I have just had a chance to get my hands on to the development this week. This year Apple has released quite feature-packed roadmap for their hardware and software. But the 2 main features I got excited the most are:

Apple Intelligence, and
Swift 6

First thing I had to check was that my old trusting Mac is still good. See System Requirements section below. Next, I needed to clear some HDD spaces for development. The rest turned out quite easy and quick - all you need is Xcode 16 Beta!

Let's get started!

System Requirements

Hardware

In summary, any Silicon Mac/iPad, and iPhone 15 Pro or higher spec should do the job. So, my M1 Mac should still work.

Software (and when)

iOS 18 (Fall/September 2024)
iPadOS 18 (Fall/September 2024)
macOS Sequoia (Fall/September 2024)
👉 Xcode 16 - all you need is this to get start!
1. Xcode 16 Beta (2.63 GB)
  1. Requirements
    1. macOS Sonoma 14.5 or later
    2. macOS Sequoia 15 for Predictive Code Completion
  2. This beta includes SDK for:
    1. iOS/iPadOS/tvOS 18
    2. macOS Sequoia 15
    3. watchOS 11
    4. visionOS 2

Note

Downloading Xcode 16 Beta (10 June 2024, build 16A5171c).

It is Xcode_16_beta.xip file. After downloading, double click to run Archive Utility to unzip it.
After unzip it, got a single file Xcode-beta.app, size 11.91 gb.

👉 For convenience, move it to /Applications folder.

xcode-select to select effective Xcode

I have several copies of Xcode installed on my Mac for various purposes. If you are like me, `xcode-select` is the tool that does all the magic - it allows you to switch between various versions of Xcode that you have.

Use xcode-select to display and select and effective version of Xcode to use during development.

$ xcode-select -p

Should display output

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Select Xcode beta for development. Note, you may be asked to run as root.

$ sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer

Checking that you have the correct Xcode.

$ xcode-select -p
/Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer

First run, my Xcode 16 beta asked to install additional components. Picture, below, showed the components and their sizes to be download. I only chose iOS for now. Of course, you can always come back and select more components later.

Creating first iOS app.

Confirm location.

Create simulator for iOS 18

Now support Swift 6

First Xcode run - yeh!

This year, there are quite a lot of features to digest. Most are non trivial and require time for me to go over them thoroughly. However, with Xcode 16 Beta, we should be good to dig in further.

Have fun!

References

Hacking with Swift - What's new in Swift 6

Sidekick Project

Apple Intelligence - Getting Start