Issue 273
May 27, 2025

This week's SwiftLee Weekly covers:

• Build apps without Xcode or xcodebuild
• Camera support for Xcode's Simulator
• An App Store Connect feature you need to enable

Enjoy this week's SwiftLee Weekly!

THIS WEEK'S BLOG POST

​Billing Grace Period Explained: How It Works and Why It Matters​

During a workshop with Apple last week, I discovered several optimizations for my apps. One of them is a feature that's disabled by default, but that can reduce churn and retain more revenue: Billing Grace Period.

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SWIFT EVOLUTION

An overview of last week's Swift Proposal state changes. Check them out when they're in review, as it's your opportunity to influence the direction of Swift's future.

SNIPPET OF THE WEEK

Camera Support on Xcode's Simulator

Not a code snippet this week, but a sneak peek into what I've been working on lately: Camera Support for Xcode's Simulator. More background information in this week's question!

You can find this post on Twitter/X, or LinkedIn.

Antoine v.d. SwiftLee  @twannl Testing the camera in Xcode's Simulator used to be impossible. I'm working on a major update of RocketSim, which allows you to use the Mac camera inside Xcode's Simulator. Here's a demo of Looki, which we always had to test on a real device. Game-changing for productivity! 🚀 9:3 PM • May 25, 2025 31 Retweets 373 Likes Read 20 replies

​

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

That's a question I've had a few years ago. I added the feature to RocketSim's roadmap and users started to vote it to being the most requested feature.

Like with many of RocketSim's features, I often have no idea where to start. I keep thinking about them for months, jumping back and forth between potential implementation ideas.

Last week, I finally found a way to actually enable camera support for Xcode's Simulator. It uses any of your Mac's cameras in replacement of the iOS camera. It's quite magic to see it working after developing for so long without proper camera support!

Yet, it's also a highly challenging feature for me to build. There's no way to simulate a hardware device on iOS and I really need to trick the system to accept the macOS camera devices. This also means that I'll have to test many scenarios—there are simply many ways to use the camera on iOS!

Looking at all the responses on this feature, I'm highly motivated to push this through. UIImagePickerController support is already completed and I'm now testing with Apple's AVCam Sample Code.

If you have an open-sourced project that uses the camera, please add it to the GitHub issue so I can validate this feature. I truly can't wait for you to try out this feature!