Edition 3.0, December 2024
Copyright © 2024 Sarah Reichelt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book or corresponding materials (such as text, images, or source code) may be reproduced or distributed by any means without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This book and all corresponding materials (such as source code) are provided on an “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind, express of implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use of other dealing in the software.

All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this book are the property of their own respective owners.

The author originally created portions of this work for the benefit of Kodeco, a community of developers who love to share their knowledge with the world. www.kodeco.com

By purchasing macOS by Tutorials, you have the following license:

All materials provided with this book are provided on an “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.

All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the properties of their respective owners.

Welcome to the third edition of macOS by Tutorials.

The first edition of this book was published in April 2022 and a lot has changed in the Swift and SwiftUI world since then. macOS itself has also seen a lot of changes with the release of macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and now Sequoia, and there have been lots of improvements to Xcode.

In 2023, Kodeco (formerly raywenderlich.com) changed their approach from being similar to a library to becoming more like a school or college. Sadly, this meant that they were no longer going to publish books like this one. However, since it is now out-of-catalog, they have allowed me to take over the book and publish in my own name. They have since reversed their stance on publishing, so you can expect to see more Kodeco books in the future.

I’d like to acknowledge their assistance and pay tribute to the editors who worked with me on the original edition: Richard Critz, Audrey Tam and Ehab Amer. Special mention to Manda Frederick who was the book manager for the first edition and without whom, this book would never have been written. Also a big thank you to Matt Derrick, former CEO of Kodeco, who agreed to and arranged the transfer of this book to me.

The major changes in this edition include:

I hope you enjoy this updated edition of macOS by Tutorials.

What do I love about programming for the Mac?

I use three Apple devices every day. My iPhone is primarily for communication; my iPad is mostly for entertainment. But the device where I spend most of my time is my Mac. The Mac is the most powerful, flexible and unrestricted device Apple makes, and I love using it.

When writing Mac apps, I get to do so many things that iOS apps cannot do, are not allowed to do, or are not suited to. I can make beautiful, intricate, powerful apps that I use every day.

I use and write iOS apps, too. There is definitely a place for both, but I feel sad that so many developers don’t even consider the enormous possibilities of the Mac app development world.

I’m so happy that you’ve decided to consider those possibilities and join me on this journey!

In this section, you’ll build a SwiftUI app called On This Day which pulls notable events for a day from an API and displays them in various ways. The app uses an interface style that appears in many macOS apps, with a navigation sidebar, details area, toolbar, menus, and settings window. You’ll end up with an app that looks like this:

When starting a new app, it’s tempting to jump right into the interface design, but this time you’ll start by working out the data models. There are two reasons for this. First, in a SwiftUI app, the data drives the display, so it makes sense to work out the data structure before you start laying out the interface. Secondly, this data comes from an external source and may not have the structure you’d like. Spending some time now to analyze and parse will save you a lot of time and effort later on.

In this chapter, you’ll use a playground to fetch the data, analyze the structure, and create the data models for the app.

Data model design is a vital first step in the development of any app, so working through this chapter will be a valuable experience, but if you’re already familiar with downloading data, parsing JSON, and creating data structs and classes, feel free to skip ahead. In Chapter 2: Setting Up the Project, you’ll download and import the data model files used in this section and start building the user interface.