Issue #77: Swift Is Bigger Than Xcode, a Paste Bug You've Probably Hit, and WWDC Is 57 Days Away
Hey everyone! 👋
Short on time this week? Here's the TL;DR: Swift now works in basically every AI-native IDE, Xcode 26.4 has a really annoying paste bug with a simple workaround, the April 28 SDK deadline is this month, and a Swift-native game engine just dropped a proper release. Oh, and Deep Dish Swift wrapped up in Chicago a few days ago. Let's get into it. 🚀
Swift Is Now in (Almost) Every IDE
As of April 8th, the official Swift extension for VS Code is now available on the Open VSX Registry, the vendor-neutral, open source extension registry hosted by the Eclipse Foundation. That means you can now write Swift in Cursor, VSCodium, AWS's Kiro, Google's Antigravity, and more, all without a manual download. Swift
The extension brings code completion, refactoring, full debugging support, a test explorer, and DocC support to the entire ecosystem of VS Code-compatible editors. Agentic IDEs like Cursor and Antigravity can now automatically install Swift support when they detect a Swift project. InfoWorld
The bigger picture here is what iOS Dev Weekly's Dave Verwer put well this week: Swift is bigger than Xcode now. Android, Wasm, Windows, embedded hardware, and now every major AI IDE, the language has quietly become general-purpose in a way that would have seemed unlikely five years ago.
Apple Inc.
PSA: Xcode 26.4 Broke Simulator Paste
After updating to Xcode 26.4, pasting from your Mac into the iOS Simulator is completely broken. Cmd+V does nothing, long-pressing a text field shows no Paste option, and the Simulator's clipboard appears empty. Restarting the Simulator, toggling "Automatically Sync Pasteboard," and resetting privacy settings all fail to fix it. @samwize
The workaround, courtesy of Junda Ong:
bash
echo -n "your text here" | xcrun simctl pbcopy bootedThis bypasses the broken Mac-to-Simulator auto-sync by writing directly to the Simulator's pasteboard. You still need to Cmd+V inside the Simulator after running it, but it works. @samwize
If running that command manually every time sounds tedious — it is. Junda followed up by vibe coding a small Mac app that keeps the two clipboards in sync automatically, using the one-liner pbpaste | xcrun simctl pbcopy booted under the hood. @samwize Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a fix; Xcode 26.5 Beta is reportedly where to watch for the resolution.
Workaround post · The vibe-coded fix · Apple Developer Forums thread
⚠️ SDK Deadline: April 28 — Two Weeks Away
You've seen this before, but it's worth repeating since it's now genuinely urgent. Starting April 28, 2026, all apps and games uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with the iOS 26 & iPadOS 26 SDK or later. The same applies to tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26. Apple Developer
If you haven't migrated to Xcode 26 yet, now is the time. The watchOS requirement also specifically mandates 64-bit support for Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Don't wait until April 27th.
Untold Engine Studio: A Swift Game Engine Worth Watching
Harold Serrano released Untold Engine Studio this week, the first bundled desktop release of the Untold Engine ecosystem. The goal is to remove friction: download a .dmg, and start building games immediately without cloning repos or setting up dependencies. Harold Serrano
The engine is written in Swift and powered by Metal, supporting macOS, iOS, and visionOS. It uses an ECS-based gameplay model and includes Gaussian Splat Rendering that runs natively on Vision Pro hardware.
It's code-driven rather than editor-first, so it's aimed at developers who want to understand and shape the underlying system.
Not trying to dethrone Unreal or Unity, just a well-crafted, native, Swift-first option that's been in development for over 12 years and is finally at a polished release point.
Harold Serrano
Deep Dish Swift 2026 Wrapped Up This Weekend
Deep Dish Swift hosted its fourth conference in Chicago this weekend, April 12–14, bringing together developers of all experience levels to share knowledge from a diverse set of speakers. Deepdishswift Sessions will be published after the conference, so keep an eye on their YouTube channel if you missed it. A solid lineup this year, look out for the talks on indie development, structured concurrency, and Server-Side Swift.
WWDC 2026: June 8–12, Mark Your Calendar
WWDC 2026 runs June 8–12. Apple will hold it primarily online, with select developers and students invited to Apple Park. 50 Distinguished Swift Student Challenge winners have been invited for a three-day experience in Cupertino, including the keynote on June 8. MacRumors This year, Apple has been teasing AI advancements as a central theme, expect iOS 27 and what comes next for the Foundation Models framework front and center.
✌️ That's Issue #77! Big two weeks: Swift is everywhere now, fix your paste bug before it drives you crazy, and don't miss the April 28 deadline.
Let's get ready for WWDC season to kick into gear! 🚀
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