MacOS Development Reference

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Created Aug ’21

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I have been looking through all the Apple Documentation for a Guide to developing MacOS Application via Swift. For example, there is an excellent reference "Develop in Swift: Fundamentals" - but it is completely iOS/UIKit focused.

While there are some notes and tutorials - there are no up-to-date guides for MacOS Development using AppKit or any other frameworks. There is just a simple list of APIs at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit. The series of books above are for iOS/UIKit only.

How does one start to learn MacOS Application development with the documentation that is provided? There are a few random tutorials, but nothing like the documentation written for iOs. It seems that Apple doesn't want you coding Mac Applications - but rather iOS Apps instead.

Also - I am confused on which path to head down : SwiftUI or Appkit. It seems that SwiftUI is the future - but the information about using SwiftUI on MacOS is even less! It feels like to learn Mac Development I NEED to learn iOS development - starting with UIKit and then learning SwiftUI. This seems like such a waste of time - I would rather just start to learn MacOS programming. It would be brilliant if there was a "Develop in Swift: Fundamentals" for MacOS - but it seems like they don't want to spend the effort to teach MacOS Development. Maybe MacOS won't be around for the long term - but having the ability to quickly develop some custom Mac Applications would help me in the short term.

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Answer 1

Claude31 OP

Aug ’21

I am confused on which path to head down : SwiftUI or Appkit.

I (personal opinion) recommend to stay with Appkit. Because of maturity of SwiftUI and because it introduces another layer that make things even more complex.

Here a a good tutorial series to start:

h t t p s : / / w w w .raywenderlich.com/731-macos-development-for-beginners-part-1
h t t p s : / / w w w .raywenderlich.com/730-macos-development-for-beginners-part-2
h t t p s : / / w w w .raywenderlich.com/729-macos-development-for-beginners-part-3

And this, it's an old document (2013) but very detailed: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapOSX/chapters/01_Introduction.html

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Answer 2

vbovio OP

Aug ’21

+1 for AppKit, I learned macOS dev with Big Nerd Ranch books and materials years ago, but that was using Objective-C, you can convert that code to Swift without much trouble.

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Answer 3

szymczyk OP

Aug ’21

The following article has a collection of resources for learning Mac development:

swiftdevjournal.com/resources-for-learning-mac-development/

Regarding learning SwiftUI or AppKit, you're going to find many more recent articles and tutorials on SwiftUI. Most of these articles are focused on iOS, but most of the material will apply to Mac too. Lists are the one view where you'll run into issues because lists(table views) have much different behavior on Mac than on iOS.

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