Stewart Lynch News
​2025-18

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​https://stewartlynch.kit.com​

This Week's Video

Arrays are great, but they’re not always the right tool for the job. In this video, we dived deep into Sets in Swift, exploring what makes them unique, how to use them effectively, and when to choose them over arrays.

You learned:

• How to create and manipulate sets
• The key differences between sets and arrays
• Core operations like insert, remove, union, intersection, and more
• Comparison methods like subset, superset, and disjoint
• Real-world use cases including tag filtering, access permissions, deduplication, and appointment scheduling

By the end, you had a fully working playground and a deeper understanding of when and why to reach for a Set instead of an Array.

​

🚀 Coming Next Sunday

Have you ever needed to convert kilometres to miles, grams to pounds, or Celsius to Fahrenheit in your apps and found yourself tangled in messy math and magic numbers?

Next week, I’m releasing a brand-new video that dives deep into Swift’s powerful Measurement API. You’ll learn how to handle units and conversions safely and elegantly, format them for any locale, and even create your own custom units.

Whether you’re building a fitness app, a weather dashboard, or anything in between, this is a feature you won’t want to miss.

Stay tuned — you’ll never look at “just a number” the same way again!

Symbols, Effects, and a Sneak Peek at What’s Next

I’m diving deep into the exciting new content and API updates announced at this year’s WWDC.

As you probably know, SF Symbols is Apple’s library of over 6,000 configurable, vector-based icons designed to work seamlessly with the San Francisco system font. These symbols integrate beautifully with text at various weights and sizes, making them a powerful design tool for apps across all Apple platforms.

What excites me most is what we can do with these symbols. Last week, I shared my new SFSymbolsPicker package, which already includes the additional symbols introduced in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26. Each year, Apple enhances the API for displaying and manipulating these symbols, and this year is no exception.

Whenever I explore a new API, I build a sample project to learn everything I can about it. These projects often form the foundation of a future video tutorial, and this year is no different. While I haven’t scripted or recorded the video yet, the project is complete. It has already helped me start updating my upcoming SymbolsBrowser app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Thanks to careful planning and a flexible architecture, integrating these new features has been relatively smooth. The only major change has been in the design. There are now so many new options that I’ve decided to move them into a modal sheet to keep the main view clean and user-friendly.

I won’t be able to share the updated app through TestFlight until Apple opens up submissions built with Xcode 26. In the meantime, you can try the current version here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/meMzNPKM.

Whether you’re on iOS or iPadOS 18 or 28, or macOS 15 or 26, the upcoming update will be ready for you as soon as it’s released.

It never hurts to ask (or post)

You can’t get what you want if you don’t ask.

Apple is hosting an event, both online and in person, in several cities around the world. The Explore the Biggest Updates from WWDC25 event was being offered in Vancouver, so I decided to register.

After submitting my application, I received a message saying they would review my request and let me know soon. A couple of days ago, I heard back. Unfortunately, I was not selected to attend. I assume demand was high, but it felt like yet another rejection from Apple, similar to my past attempts to attend WWDC or local Apple events.

Feeling disappointed, I shared my experience on my three favorite social platforms: Mastodon, X, and Bluesky. Soon after, several people reached out to me, including an old acquaintance who used to be an Apple reseller in Vancouver. He contacted someone he knew at Apple, and another Apple employee also stepped in to help.

To my surprise and delight, I received another email today telling me there had been an error and that I was now officially invited. I’m thrilled to say I’ll be attending the event at Apple’s offices in Vancouver this Friday.

I guess the old saying is true: it really is about who you know. I’ll share more about the event in next week’s update!

My Other Stuff

Channel Listing App

A Searchable Mac app containing a list of all of my YouTube videos including the ability to watch them in the app and download starter and completed source code

Free on Gumroad

CustomGPT

A custom ChatGPT that has indexed the transcripts of my videos.
Add to your ChatGPT Sidebar​

Smile4Me Course

Learn how to build a multi-targeted app using a Jokes API.
Don't let the low cost of the course fool you into believing that low cost means low content. 6.5 hours of content and 56 videos.

​Enrol in the course

Affiliate Links

Below are a number of affiliate links for products that I not only endorse but use all the time. I will never endorse something that I do not believe in.

AppScreens

Simply the best way to create your Screenshots for your AppStore connect submissions
​https://appscreens.com/?via=92e164​

RocketSim - Build Apps Faster 

This is an invaluable tool when working with the simulator in Xcode.

   https://gumroad.com/a/122988499/ftvbh 

BigMountain Studio Books 

Mark Moeykens is a master at creating SwiftUI reference books. I have purchased every one of these books and refer to them all the time.

Use this link and we both will benefit

​https://www.bigmountainstudio.com/a/77jt8​