Give your simulator superpowers

RocketSim: An Essential Developer Tool
as recommended by Apple

Issue 296
Nov 04, 2025

This week's SwiftLee Weekly covers:

  • Simulator Camera Testing
  • A goodbye to a long running conference
  • Optimize the performance of your SwiftUI app

Enjoy this week's SwiftLee Weekly!

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THIS WEEK'S BLOG POST

Simulator Camera: Test your app without a physical device

It's the feature that shocked the most developers so far— how is this possible?!

It's also the feature that should've been built by Apple for years.

It's Simulator Camera support, testing camera functionality using your Mac's camera.

This is now generally available and this week's article tells you all about it.

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CURATED FROM THE COMMUNITY

I Gave My First Conference Talk

Ever considered giving a talk but never dared to do so? Chris Wu did it, and the result is fantastic. Get inspired, take that step!
chriswu.com

What's new in Swift: October 2025 Edition

October has been a great month for Swift! Here’s an overview of everything that changed.
swift.org

The Problem With Combine Annotations

If you’re using Combine and Swift Concurrency, this article by Matt is a must-read.
massicotte.org

Optimize your app's speed and efficiency

A must-watch for SwiftUI developers. Learn how to boost performance, monitor foundation models, and reduce battery usage — all to make your apps feel faster.
youtube.com

ScrollView snapping in SwiftUI

Be warned: this article by Natalia Panferova teaches you ScrollView snapping in SwiftUI with images of cats.
nilcoalescing.com

Text Effects using TextRenderer in SwiftUI

SwiftUI’s built-in Text modifiers can only take you so far. With the new TextRenderer API in iOS 18, you get full control over how text is drawn — from subtle highlights to full character animations. Create dynamic, custom-rendered text in SwiftUI with this article by Create with Swift.
createwithswift.com

SWIFT EVOLUTION

An overview of last week's Swift Proposal state changes. Check them out when they're in review, as it's your opportunity to influence the direction of Swift's future.

There have not been any changes in the past 7 days

WHAT I'M WORKING ON

A goodbye to #Pragma Conference

Pragma has been an amazing conference, with many impressive talks. One stood out: Arkadiusz Świętnicki is a sightless coder and delivered an amazing talk. If that's not enough, he also did a shoutout to Helm and RocketSim for making app development more approachable.

However — It's a sad way to end this newsletter issue — but I've been part of the last edition of #Pragma Mark Conference in Bologna. It's harder than ever to organize conferences. Costs are raising, sponsorships are more challenging to get, tickets no longer sell as fast as before.

I'm on a personal mission to find out how we can keep conferences alive. They're super important for the community, they bring us together. If you are a conference organizer or if you once tried to organize one, reply and let me know the hardest challenges.

p.s. my talk on Approachable Concurrency will be available on my YouTube channel in two weeks.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Continue your Swift development journey

I hope you've enjoyed this week's content. You don't have to wait till next Tuesday for more insights, I share every day on these channels:

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Thank you so much for your support, and until next Tuesday,

Antoine