What's new in Swift: January 2026 Edition
<p>A <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/1qhhiod/">Reddit thread</a> earlier this month asked about building web apps with Swift. For this edition of âWhatâs new in Swift,â we invited a developer to share their experience:</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi, Iâm Nick Sloan. Iâm the head of engineering at <a href="https://studioworks.app/">Studioworks</a>, a platform that makes it easy and fun to run your creative studio, agency or freelance business.</p> <p>We chose Swift for Studioworks because of how easy it is to write safe and reliable code with great performance. Our Swift project makes use of <a href="https://hummingbird.codes">Hummingbird 2</a>, <a href="https://soto.codes/">Soto</a> (for its incredible DynamoDB Codable support), <a href="https://github.com/sloatescoan/hummingbird-macrorouting/">Hummingbird MacroRouting</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/elementary-swift/elementary">Elementary</a>. Studioworks is a big and growing project. We are the largest Elementary codebase, and I suspect we are among the biggest projects using Hummingbird as well.</p> <p>Weâve already processed millions of dollars in invoices for our customers, and after 20 years of shipping web applications, I have never seen fewer crashes and bugs make it to production. Performance has also been excellent, especially after moving our templates to Elementary. Our heaviest pages make it to the browser in less than 100ms.</p> <p>Weâve been deploying web applications with PHP and Python for decades, and getting started with a Swift web project was certainly a bit slower. We had to recreate some of the build, deployment and chat tooling we had been relying on in our Python projects for years, and it took us a bit of experimenting to realize that Elementary was the best choice for templating. Once we got past those hurdles weâve been able to build about as fast as we ever did with Python, and the quality is much better.</p> <p>Swift on the web has been a resounding success for us, and I hope weâll see this part of the community continue to grow!</p> <p>â Nick Sloan</p> </blockquote> <p>Learn more about Swift on Linux and server-based use cases by checking out our <a href="/blog/whats-new-in-swift-october-2025/">October edition</a>, which featured highlights from the Server-Side Swift Conference. The swift.org website also has a use case page dedicated to <a href="/get-started/cloud-services/">cloud services</a>, including a <a href="https://docs.swift.org/getting-started-swift-server/tutorials/getting-started-swift-server/">tutorial</a> to get started.</p> <p>And now for whatâs new in Swift this month.</p> <h2 id="videos-to-watch" class="header-with-anchor">Videos to watch <a title="Permalink for Videos to watch section" href="#videos-to-watch"> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg width="18px" height="18px" viewBox="0 0 14 14" role="img" focusable="false" aria-hidden="true" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="m 11.58824,9.823529 q 0,-0.294117 -0.20589,-0.499999 L 9.85294,7.794118 q -0.20588,-0.205883 -0.5,-0.205883 -0.30882,0 -0.52941,0.235295 0.0221,0.02206 0.13971,0.136029 0.11764,0.113971 0.15808,0.158088 0.0404,0.04412 0.1103,0.139706 0.0698,0.09559 0.0956,0.1875 0.0257,0.09191 0.0257,0.202206 0,0.294117 -0.20588,0.5 -0.20588,0.205882 -0.5,0.205882 -0.1103,0 -0.20221,-0.02573 Q 8.35293,9.301471 8.25733,9.231621 8.16173,9.161771 8.11763,9.121327 8.07353,9.080887 7.95954,8.963238 7.84557,8.845591 7.82351,8.823533 7.58086,9.051474 7.58086,9.360297 q 0,0.294118 0.20588,0.5 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.29412,0 0.5,-0.191177 l 1.08088,-1.073529 q 0.20589,-0.205883 0.20589,-0.492648 z M 6.41912,4.639706 q 0,-0.294118 -0.20588,-0.5 L 4.69853,2.617647 q -0.20588,-0.205882 -0.5,-0.205882 -0.28677,0 -0.5,0.198529 L 2.61765,3.683823 q -0.20589,0.205883 -0.20589,0.492648 0,0.294117 0.20589,0.499999 l 1.52941,1.529412 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.30882,0 0.52941,-0.227942 Q 5.15437,6.15441 5.03676,6.040441 4.91912,5.92647 4.87868,5.882353 4.83828,5.838233 4.76838,5.742647 q -0.0698,-0.09559 -0.0956,-0.1875 -0.0257,-0.09191 -0.0257,-0.202206 0,-0.294117 0.20588,-0.5 0.20588,-0.205882 0.5,-0.205882 0.1103,0 0.20221,0.02573 0.0919,0.02573 0.1875,0.09559 0.0956,0.06985 0.1397,0.110294 0.0441,0.04044 0.15809,0.158089 Q 6.15443,5.154409 6.17649,5.176467 6.41914,4.948526 6.41914,4.639703 z M 13,9.823529 q 0,0.882353 -0.625,1.492647 l -1.08088,1.07353 Q 10.68382,13 9.80147,13 q -0.88971,0 -1.5,-0.625 L 6.78676,10.852941 Q 6.17647,10.242647 6.17647,9.360294 q 0,-0.904412 0.64706,-1.536764 L 6.17647,7.176471 Q 5.54412,7.82353 4.64706,7.82353 q -0.88235,0 -1.5,-0.617648 L 1.617647,5.676471 Q 1,5.058824 1,4.176471 1,3.294118 1.625,2.683824 L 2.70588,1.610294 Q 3.31618,1 4.19853,1 q 0.88971,0 1.5,0.625 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.61029,0.610294 0.61029,1.492647 0,0.904412 -0.64706,1.536764 L 7.82353,6.823529 Q 8.45588,6.17647 9.35294,6.17647 q 0.88235,0 1.5,0.617648 l 1.52941,1.529411 Q 13,8.941176 13,9.823529 z"/></svg> </a></h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opqKGgJavkw">On Progressive Disclosure in Swift</a> - Doug Gregorâs must-watch talk explores how Swift lets you progressively use more language features as your experience and codebase evolves.</li> <li>A new episode of NSScreencast dives into livecoding the <a href="https://nsscreencast.com/episodes/604-brc-part1">Billion Row Challenge</a>, with Matt Massicotte as a guest.</li> </ul> <h2 id="new-package-releases" class="header-with-anchor">New package releases <a title="Permalink for New package releases section" href="#new-package-releases"> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg width="18px" height="18px" viewBox="0 0 14 14" role="img" focusable="false" aria-hidden="true" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="m 11.58824,9.823529 q 0,-0.294117 -0.20589,-0.499999 L 9.85294,7.794118 q -0.20588,-0.205883 -0.5,-0.205883 -0.30882,0 -0.52941,0.235295 0.0221,0.02206 0.13971,0.136029 0.11764,0.113971 0.15808,0.158088 0.0404,0.04412 0.1103,0.139706 0.0698,0.09559 0.0956,0.1875 0.0257,0.09191 0.0257,0.202206 0,0.294117 -0.20588,0.5 -0.20588,0.205882 -0.5,0.205882 -0.1103,0 -0.20221,-0.02573 Q 8.35293,9.301471 8.25733,9.231621 8.16173,9.161771 8.11763,9.121327 8.07353,9.080887 7.95954,8.963238 7.84557,8.845591 7.82351,8.823533 7.58086,9.051474 7.58086,9.360297 q 0,0.294118 0.20588,0.5 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.29412,0 0.5,-0.191177 l 1.08088,-1.073529 q 0.20589,-0.205883 0.20589,-0.492648 z M 6.41912,4.639706 q 0,-0.294118 -0.20588,-0.5 L 4.69853,2.617647 q -0.20588,-0.205882 -0.5,-0.205882 -0.28677,0 -0.5,0.198529 L 2.61765,3.683823 q -0.20589,0.205883 -0.20589,0.492648 0,0.294117 0.20589,0.499999 l 1.52941,1.529412 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.30882,0 0.52941,-0.227942 Q 5.15437,6.15441 5.03676,6.040441 4.91912,5.92647 4.87868,5.882353 4.83828,5.838233 4.76838,5.742647 q -0.0698,-0.09559 -0.0956,-0.1875 -0.0257,-0.09191 -0.0257,-0.202206 0,-0.294117 0.20588,-0.5 0.20588,-0.205882 0.5,-0.205882 0.1103,0 0.20221,0.02573 0.0919,0.02573 0.1875,0.09559 0.0956,0.06985 0.1397,0.110294 0.0441,0.04044 0.15809,0.158089 Q 6.15443,5.154409 6.17649,5.176467 6.41914,4.948526 6.41914,4.639703 z M 13,9.823529 q 0,0.882353 -0.625,1.492647 l -1.08088,1.07353 Q 10.68382,13 9.80147,13 q -0.88971,0 -1.5,-0.625 L 6.78676,10.852941 Q 6.17647,10.242647 6.17647,9.360294 q 0,-0.904412 0.64706,-1.536764 L 6.17647,7.176471 Q 5.54412,7.82353 4.64706,7.82353 q -0.88235,0 -1.5,-0.617648 L 1.617647,5.676471 Q 1,5.058824 1,4.176471 1,3.294118 1.625,2.683824 L 2.70588,1.610294 Q 3.31618,1 4.19853,1 q 0.88971,0 1.5,0.625 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.61029,0.610294 0.61029,1.492647 0,0.904412 -0.64706,1.536764 L 7.82353,6.823529 Q 8.45588,6.17647 9.35294,6.17647 q 0.88235,0 1.5,0.617648 l 1.52941,1.529411 Q 13,8.941176 13,9.823529 z"/></svg> </a></h2> <ul> <li>Want to build 3D models with code? <a href="https://github.com/tomasf/Cadova">Cadova</a> is a programmable alternative to traditional CAD tools, with a focus on 3D printing.</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/feather-framework/feather-database">Feather Database</a> provides a database-agnostic layer that can be shared by multiple database drivers. And itâs designed for modern Swift concurrency.</li> <li>Miguel de Icaza has ported the .NET Foundation mail stack, originally created by Jeffrey Stedfast (MailKit/MimeKit), to Swift. Hello <a href="https://github.com/migueldeicaza/MailFoundation">MailFoundation</a> and <a href="https://github.com/migueldeicaza/MimeFoundation">MimeFoundation</a>!</li> </ul> <h2 id="community-highlights" class="header-with-anchor">Community highlights <a title="Permalink for Community highlights section" href="#community-highlights"> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg width="18px" height="18px" viewBox="0 0 14 14" role="img" focusable="false" aria-hidden="true" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="m 11.58824,9.823529 q 0,-0.294117 -0.20589,-0.499999 L 9.85294,7.794118 q -0.20588,-0.205883 -0.5,-0.205883 -0.30882,0 -0.52941,0.235295 0.0221,0.02206 0.13971,0.136029 0.11764,0.113971 0.15808,0.158088 0.0404,0.04412 0.1103,0.139706 0.0698,0.09559 0.0956,0.1875 0.0257,0.09191 0.0257,0.202206 0,0.294117 -0.20588,0.5 -0.20588,0.205882 -0.5,0.205882 -0.1103,0 -0.20221,-0.02573 Q 8.35293,9.301471 8.25733,9.231621 8.16173,9.161771 8.11763,9.121327 8.07353,9.080887 7.95954,8.963238 7.84557,8.845591 7.82351,8.823533 7.58086,9.051474 7.58086,9.360297 q 0,0.294118 0.20588,0.5 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.29412,0 0.5,-0.191177 l 1.08088,-1.073529 q 0.20589,-0.205883 0.20589,-0.492648 z M 6.41912,4.639706 q 0,-0.294118 -0.20588,-0.5 L 4.69853,2.617647 q -0.20588,-0.205882 -0.5,-0.205882 -0.28677,0 -0.5,0.198529 L 2.61765,3.683823 q -0.20589,0.205883 -0.20589,0.492648 0,0.294117 0.20589,0.499999 l 1.52941,1.529412 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.30882,0 0.52941,-0.227942 Q 5.15437,6.15441 5.03676,6.040441 4.91912,5.92647 4.87868,5.882353 4.83828,5.838233 4.76838,5.742647 q -0.0698,-0.09559 -0.0956,-0.1875 -0.0257,-0.09191 -0.0257,-0.202206 0,-0.294117 0.20588,-0.5 0.20588,-0.205882 0.5,-0.205882 0.1103,0 0.20221,0.02573 0.0919,0.02573 0.1875,0.09559 0.0956,0.06985 0.1397,0.110294 0.0441,0.04044 0.15809,0.158089 Q 6.15443,5.154409 6.17649,5.176467 6.41914,4.948526 6.41914,4.639703 z M 13,9.823529 q 0,0.882353 -0.625,1.492647 l -1.08088,1.07353 Q 10.68382,13 9.80147,13 q -0.88971,0 -1.5,-0.625 L 6.78676,10.852941 Q 6.17647,10.242647 6.17647,9.360294 q 0,-0.904412 0.64706,-1.536764 L 6.17647,7.176471 Q 5.54412,7.82353 4.64706,7.82353 q -0.88235,0 -1.5,-0.617648 L 1.617647,5.676471 Q 1,5.058824 1,4.176471 1,3.294118 1.625,2.683824 L 2.70588,1.610294 Q 3.31618,1 4.19853,1 q 0.88971,0 1.5,0.625 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.61029,0.610294 0.61029,1.492647 0,0.904412 -0.64706,1.536764 L 7.82353,6.823529 Q 8.45588,6.17647 9.35294,6.17647 q 0.88235,0 1.5,0.617648 l 1.52941,1.529411 Q 13,8.941176 13,9.823529 z"/></svg> </a></h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://xtremekforever.substack.com/p/introduction-to-building-swift-for">Introduction to Building Swift for Yocto</a> - Check out this embedded Linux guide to using meta-swift to build Swift for a Raspberry Pi Zero 2.</li> <li>Registration is open for several Swift community conferences, including <a href="https://swiftcraft.uk">SwiftCraft</a> and <a href="https://tryswift.jp/en/">try! Swift Tokyo</a>. The Call for Proposals (CFP) is still open for try! Swift Tokyo.</li> </ul> <h2 id="swift-evolution" class="header-with-anchor">Swift Evolution <a title="Permalink for Swift Evolution section" href="#swift-evolution"> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg width="18px" height="18px" viewBox="0 0 14 14" role="img" focusable="false" aria-hidden="true" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="m 11.58824,9.823529 q 0,-0.294117 -0.20589,-0.499999 L 9.85294,7.794118 q -0.20588,-0.205883 -0.5,-0.205883 -0.30882,0 -0.52941,0.235295 0.0221,0.02206 0.13971,0.136029 0.11764,0.113971 0.15808,0.158088 0.0404,0.04412 0.1103,0.139706 0.0698,0.09559 0.0956,0.1875 0.0257,0.09191 0.0257,0.202206 0,0.294117 -0.20588,0.5 -0.20588,0.205882 -0.5,0.205882 -0.1103,0 -0.20221,-0.02573 Q 8.35293,9.301471 8.25733,9.231621 8.16173,9.161771 8.11763,9.121327 8.07353,9.080887 7.95954,8.963238 7.84557,8.845591 7.82351,8.823533 7.58086,9.051474 7.58086,9.360297 q 0,0.294118 0.20588,0.5 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.29412,0 0.5,-0.191177 l 1.08088,-1.073529 q 0.20589,-0.205883 0.20589,-0.492648 z M 6.41912,4.639706 q 0,-0.294118 -0.20588,-0.5 L 4.69853,2.617647 q -0.20588,-0.205882 -0.5,-0.205882 -0.28677,0 -0.5,0.198529 L 2.61765,3.683823 q -0.20589,0.205883 -0.20589,0.492648 0,0.294117 0.20589,0.499999 l 1.52941,1.529412 q 0.19853,0.19853 0.5,0.19853 0.30882,0 0.52941,-0.227942 Q 5.15437,6.15441 5.03676,6.040441 4.91912,5.92647 4.87868,5.882353 4.83828,5.838233 4.76838,5.742647 q -0.0698,-0.09559 -0.0956,-0.1875 -0.0257,-0.09191 -0.0257,-0.202206 0,-0.294117 0.20588,-0.5 0.20588,-0.205882 0.5,-0.205882 0.1103,0 0.20221,0.02573 0.0919,0.02573 0.1875,0.09559 0.0956,0.06985 0.1397,0.110294 0.0441,0.04044 0.15809,0.158089 Q 6.15443,5.154409 6.17649,5.176467 6.41914,4.948526 6.41914,4.639703 z M 13,9.823529 q 0,0.882353 -0.625,1.492647 l -1.08088,1.07353 Q 10.68382,13 9.80147,13 q -0.88971,0 -1.5,-0.625 L 6.78676,10.852941 Q 6.17647,10.242647 6.17647,9.360294 q 0,-0.904412 0.64706,-1.536764 L 6.17647,7.176471 Q 5.54412,7.82353 4.64706,7.82353 q -0.88235,0 -1.5,-0.617648 L 1.617647,5.676471 Q 1,5.058824 1,4.176471 1,3.294118 1.625,2.683824 L 2.70588,1.610294 Q 3.31618,1 4.19853,1 q 0.88971,0 1.5,0.625 l 1.51471,1.522059 q 0.61029,0.610294 0.61029,1.492647 0,0.904412 -0.64706,1.536764 L 7.82353,6.823529 Q 8.45588,6.17647 9.35294,6.17647 q 0.88235,0 1.5,0.617648 l 1.52941,1.529411 Q 13,8.941176 13,9.823529 z"/></svg> </a></h2> <p>The Swift project adds new language features through the <a href="/swift-evolution/">Swift Evolution process</a>. These are some of the proposals currently under review or recently accepted for a future Swift release.</p> <p><strong>Under active review:</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/proposals/0506-advanced-observation-tracking.md">SE-0506</a> Advanced Observation Tracking - <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@Observable</code> types automatically track when their properties change. However, advanced use cases like developing middleware infrastructure or widgeting systems require more control and features. This proposal adds options to the existing <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">withObservationTracking</code> to control when/which changes are observed, and a continuous variant that re-observes automatically after coalesced events.</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/proposals/0507-borrow-accessors.md">SE-0507</a> Borrow and Mutate Accessors - When you read or write a Swift property, the code that handles that access currently either makes a copy of the value or uses coroutines, which have performance overhead. This proposal adds new <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">borrow</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">mutate</code> keywords that let properties provide direct access to their stored values and enables properties that hold values that canât be copied.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Recently accepted:</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/proposals/0498-runtime-demangle.md">SE-0498</a> Expose demangle function in Runtime module - The Swift compiler uses name mangling, turning Swift symbols into strings like <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$sSS7cStringSSSPys4Int8VG_tcfC</code> which show up in backtraces and profiling tools. There are times, however, when a human-readable format is preferable. This proposal introduces a new API that allows calling out to the Swift runtimeâs demangler, without leaving the process.</li> </ul>