Swift Playgrounds 4 Will Let iPad Users Publish Apps

It looks like Swift Playgrounds 4 will be letting iPad users publish their apps to the App Store in the near future, with no need to build them on a Mac first.

Swift Playgrounds has given iPad users a way to play around with coding and app/game design for some time, but actually publishing their work wasn't so easy. According to 9to5Mac, that's about to change with the release of Swift Playgrounds 4 (the 4.0 release), which will allow iPad users to submit directly to App Store Connect.

It should make app submission a fair bit smoother for iPad users, who've previously had to build their apps on a Mac using Xcode before attempting to publish.

According to the screenshots obtained by 9to5Mac, it also looks like users can create an icon for their app using templates built into version 4.0. There's also an option for making a custom icon using a separate image file.

Getting an app published will still require a few more steps than just submitting it via Swift Playgrounds 4. Users will need to be a part of Apple's developer program, set up an App Store page, enter in-app privacy details, and so on. But it will all be doable from the iPad.

9to5Mac's source has stated that some of the features in Swift Playgrounds 4 also require iPadOS 15.2, which is itself still in beta.

The 4.0 update will probably see a public release around the same time as iPadOS 15.2, which is expected sometime within the next few months.