Swift Playgrounds for iPad Updated with New Document Browser and iPadOS 18 Support

January 30, 2025

By:

Riley Hill

Swift Playgrounds now uses the updated document browser from iPadOS 18

Swift Playgrounds, Apple’s tool for learning to code and building apps on iPad, has been updated to version 4.6. The highlight feature of this release is support for the new document browser that was introduced in iPadOS 18.

This updated interface presents two buttons for getting started. The Learn To Code button presents the previous UI that includes all of the included coding lessons. The New Playground button lets users quickly create a new Playground Book or an App Playground, which is used to build apps that can be submitted to the App Store.

The new interface provide a quick way to create a new Playground and access other Playgrounds in the Files app

It also looks like this update brings support for the iPadOS 18/iOS 18 SDK. This means developers on iPad can finally leverage some of the new capabilities in iPadOS 18, like Image Playground or AccessorySetupKit. Unfortunately, there are still many frameworks, like WidgetKit, that remain unavailable for iPadOS developers to take advantage of in their apps.

Swift Playgrounds is available for free in the App Store.