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Hacking with Swift Newsletter: October 2026

Paul Hudson

In this issue: new, free tools for indie app developers, a big update for the Swift AI Playbook, Ignite approaches 1.0, and more!

New tools for indie app developers

In the last month I shipped two great new tools that will help every indie app developer grow their success on the App Store – and both are completely free!

First, Kickstart Signal is a new web service that lets you take feature requests from your users right in your app. There’s a fully native SwiftUI SDK, and it comes packed with features such as voting, commenting, developer replies, auto-translation, and more.

If you already have a Kickstart Exchange account – that’s my free service to provide advertising for indie app developers! – then you already have Kickstart Signal ready to go. If not, you can find out more here.

Second, I just released a new web tool that tells you exactly where your apps appear in various App Store search results – and also how that rank has changed in the last 30 days. This is such a great way to start improving your App Store ranking, so I hope you try it out!

There are a whole bunch of ASO tools out there that are free, as long as you don’t mind creating an account, entering your credit card details for a “free trial”, or setting up a “quick call” with their sales team.

This new tool is different: just enter the App Store URL for your app (or a competitor’s!) and you get results a second later. Try it yourself here.

I’ve built my career on delivering high-quality, free resources for every developer, and these new tools are the latest in that work – I want everyone to be able to succeed building apps, no matter their background. I hope you find them useful!

Big updates for the Swift AI Playbook

At long last, the latest update for this book is finally ready – I apologize for taking so long!

The update adds a whole range of new material for iOS 27, including Private Cloud Compute and result builders for sessions, but also adds a wholly new chapter on converting speech to text using Apple’s Speech framework, and an updated and expanded sample project.

If you already bought the book, please watch for an email tomorrow with download instructions. If you haven’t, you can find out more here.

Upcoming Hacking with Swift+ dates

The next Hacking with Swift+ live stream dates are:

  • Saturday November 14th
  • Saturday December 12th
  • Saturday January 2nd

We build a complete app from scratch in each one, so there’s always something new to learn – and something new to ship!

Plus, if you missed our special Building apps with AI workshop, that whole live stream is now available to replay through Hacking with Swift+, complete with transcript. It’s four hours long and covers a vast range of material, so make sure to brew some coffee before watching!

Thanks to sponsors!

Thank you to RevenueCat and Swiftsonic for sponsoring Hacking with Swift last month!

  • Rico, RevenueCat's AI assistant, can now take action. Ask it to create products, configure Offerings, build paywalls, or even set up an experiment, and Rico can do it for you. You still approve every change before it goes live. Find out more here.
  • Swiftsonic is an all-new event for Swift developers taking place in Nashville, November 20–22. Build alongside fellow Swift and iOS developers with practical talks, the best in AI, fresh ideas, and conversations that make you pumped to ship again. I have a handful of discounted tickets still available! Find out more here.

News from friends

This month Apple launched the new iPhone Duo, and I feel so proud of our community – so many indie developers rose to the challenge of designing something beautiful for iPhone Duo, and really smashed it.

If you have an iPhone Duo and are looking for inspiration, try some of these:

My own Hacktivate game also got an iPhone Duo upgrade, but you already downloaded that, right?

Right?

Just in case you haven’t…

Ignite approaches 1.0

Two years ago I launched Ignite, a static website generator for Swift developers. It has convenient SwiftUI-like syntax, deep support for accessibility, and generates sites that work great on desktop and mobile alike.

Well, after two years of work it’s now time for Ignite to start moving towards its first stable release, 1.0. The first step towards that has already been taken, with Ignite moving to its own independent organization on GitHub. But the next steps are still being finalized, and if you would like to be involved, now is your chance – join #ignite on the Hacking with Swift Slack workspace.

Discounts on books

Here's a reminder of the supporter's discount codes you can use to save money on all my books:

Remember, if you already bought books from either the Swift Power Pack, the Swift Platform Pack, or the Swift Plus Pack and want to upgrade to the full bundle, I can create a custom discount code for you that takes off whatever you already paid – just email me.

One more thing…

It’s Halloween today, so… trick or treat?

Paul

548 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104-5401, USA