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The ultimate investment for your iOS career
Hacking with Swift+ is a subscription service that delivers incredible, hands-on Swift tutorials as both video and article, so you can deepen your understanding of Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, and more, and take your career to the next level.
HWS+ costs just $20 per month, and every article includes 4K Ultra HD video.
4K Video
All articles come with 4K Ultra HD video showing the techniques, with live commentary from me so you can understand exactly how something works.
Article + Code
All articles also come as text as well as video so you can read if you prefer, plus copy any code you want to try, and even challenges to help you take your learning further.
Exclusive content
All HWS+ articles are available only for subscribers, on topics such as advanced Swift, building custom SwiftUI components, high-performance apps, and more.
One price
We don't have tiers or upgrades or similar, so for just $20 a month you get all the videos, articles, and code, including all articles published before you joined.
Sign up today
You can start your HWS+ subscription today and start watching videos immediately, then come back tomorrow and subsequent days to keep getting new content.
- Get instant access to all past existing Hacking with Swift+ episodes, plus new ones as they are released.
- Support my work helping make high-quality Swift tutorials for everyone.
- Pay just $20 per month, charged monthly.
To get started, please click the button below to sign in to Hacking with Swift.
How it works
HWS+ was launched June 1st, and many all-new articles plus accompanying videos have already been posted since then.
But it doesn't stop there. We'll keeping adding videos to the courses, and keep adding new courses, to build this up into the ultimate toolkit for advancing your Swift knowledge.
Courses launching now…
- Advanced Swift will focus on improving your core Swift language skills, regardless of whether you use UIKit, SwiftUI, or something else.
- Custom SwiftUI Components will walk you through building a wide variety of reusable UI components using SwiftUI.
- High-performance Apps will teach you techniques for writing faster code, rendering faster views, and more, so you can make best use of your user's device.
- Making the most of Foundation will go back to the basics of Apple's Foundation framework, exploring how best to use common code such as
UserDefaultsandMeasurement. - Networking covers a core topic in a fresh way, showing you smart ways to make your code simpler and safer using generics, Combine, and more.
- SwiftUI Special Effects will teach you how to add some surprise and delight to your user interface using particles, Core Motion, and more.
Each of those courses have had their initial videos published, but more will be added daily until the courses are complete.
And more courses are on the way: debugging, testing, and of course lots more SwiftUI – I have an epic collection of tutorials coming, and I can’t wait to share them all with you.
Your Hacking with Swift+ membership gets you every subscriber-only article and video published now and in the future.
Here's a sample of what's waiting for you…
HIGH-PERFORMANCE APPS
FREE: Using memoization to speed up slow functions
In this article you’ll learn how memoization can dramatically boost the performance of slow functions, and how easy Swift makes it thanks to its generics and closures.
ADVANCED SWIFT
FREE: How to use phantom types in Swift
Phantom types are a powerful way to give the Swift compiler extra information about our code so that it can stop us from making mistakes. In this article I’m going to explain how they work and why you’d want them, as well as providing lots of hands-on examples you can try.
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
FREE: Creating a WaveView to draw smooth waveforms
In this article I’m going to walk you through building a WaveView with SwiftUI, allowing us to create beautiful waveform-like effects to bring your user interface to life.
MAKING THE MOST OF FOUNDATION
Storing preferences efficiently
Apple’s UserDefaults system lets us store small amounts of user data for our app, which might sound simple but it’s deceptively powerful. In this article I’ll show you the correct way to create initial preferences, how to share preferences across applications, how to synchronize data with iCloud, and why this is a case where property wrappers probably aren’t a good solution.
DATA STRUCTURES
Queues and deques
Now that we’ve covered stacks and linked lists, queues and deques ought to be easier. In this article we’ll build both data structures in just a few lines of Swift, then explore interesting additions such as contains().
MAKING THE MOST OF FOUNDATION
Converting measurements safely
Apple’s Foundation framework makes it easy for us to convert any kind of measurement into any other kind of measurement. In this article I’ll show you how to make the most of these APIs, but also why it’s so useful that they work with Swift features such as operator overloading, plus important protocols such as Comparable, Equatable, and Codable.
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
Creating an AccessibleStack that flips stack axis based on Dynamic Type
There are several times when you might want to flip between a HStack and VStack, but one useful option is to look at the Dynamic Type size. Apple uses this itself to switch list rows to a vertical layout when using larger fonts, and in this tutorial I’ll show you how it’s done.
NETWORKING
Codable networking with Combine
So much of our job is about downloading JSON data, decoding it using Codable, then presenting it – it’s a core skill. But it’s common to see folks rely on huge libraries such as Alamofire, or get mixed up with URLSession. So, in this article we’ll look at how to rewrite common networking code using Combine, then add some generics to make it truly flexible.
ADVANCED SWIFT
The pros and cons of operator overloading
I’ve written about operator overloading previously, not least in my book Pro Swift, but in the article I want to go into more depth on the places where it’s really useful – and the places where it’s not such a good idea.
INTERMEDIATE SWIFT
Understanding generics – part 2
In this second tutorial on generics, we’re going to explore creating several different generic types, look at extending generics, and look at how we can apply our generics knowledge to create property wrappers.
ADVANCED SWIFT
Existentials and type erasure – part 1
Type erasure helps us solve difficult type system problems by purposefully discarding some information. In this article we’ll look at what the underlying problem is and how Swift solves it, and in the second part we’ll continue on to look at how we can build type erasure ourselves.
ADVANCED SWIFT
Why opaque return types are so important
Opaque return types are a powerful feature in Swift, and are also critically important for writing SwiftUI. In this article I’ll be explaining how they work, and why they give us more power than returning a simple protocol.
SWIFTUI SPECIAL EFFECTS
Shadows and glows
SwiftUI gives us a modifier to make simple shadows, but if you want something more advanced such as inner shadows or glows, you need to do extra work. In this article I’ll show you how to get both those effects and more in a customizable, flexible way.
REMAKING APPS
Remaking the iOS lock screen
In this article we’re going to look at how easy it is to rebuild the iOS lock screen. Yes, this isn’t hard, but along the way I think you’ll pick up a few cool SwiftUI tricks, including better date formatting, haptic buttons, and more.
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
Creating a LongPressButton to trigger after delay
In this article I’m going to walk you through building a LongPressButton with SwiftUI, which will requires users to press and hold for a second before it’s triggered.
ADVANCED SWIFT
Making the most of optionals
Swift’s optionals are implemented as simple enums, with just a little compiler magic sprinkled around as syntactic sugar. However, they do much more than people realize, and in this article I’m going to demonstrate some of their power features that can really help you write better code – and blow your mind along the way.
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
Creating a StretchingHeader that sticks to the top of a view
When users scroll beyond the top of a scroll view the default behavior is to show some empty space, but many apps prefer to show a stretchy header area instead. In this article I’ll show you how to build that SwiftUI, making an image that stays fixed to the top no matter what.
DATA STRUCTURES
Ordered sets
Arrays and sets have their own advantages and disadvantages, but what if we could combine them both to make an ordered set? We can! And in this article that’s exactly what we’ll do.
MAKING THE MOST OF FOUNDATION
Using dates safely and effectively
Working with dates in software is hard, and if you don’t understand why then think about time zones, think about leap years, or think about how it’s the year 2563 in the Thai calendar. Apple gives us many tools for making them easier but they can be hard to discover, so in this article I’m going to try to provide some clear guidance for what to use and when.
CUSTOM SWIFTUI COMPONENTS
Creating a ShapeView to render UIBezierPaths
Bezier paths let us draw all sorts of shapes efficiently and smoothly, and with a little work we can bring them into SwiftUI then animate them smooth, and in this article I’m going to walk you through making a very simple ShapeView struct to do just that.
FAQ
How much does it cost?
Hacking with Swift+ costs $20 a month, paid monthly. Your membership includes all subscriber-only videos and articles available now and published in the future, for as long as your membership remains active. You can cancel your membership at any time, and your access will continue until your term ends.
Why is there no yearly subscription term?
At this time Hacking with Swift+ is only available as a monthly term, because it makes it easier to launch. In the future we might add an annual subscription option, and you'll be able to switch over to it.
How often are you releasing new videos?
Everything starts from zero, and Hacking with Swift+ is no different. But I'm keen to get off zero as fast as possible, which means publishing a lot of new tutorials in these early days. The pace will slow a little once the back catalog is bigger, but there will still be many new tutorials every month.
Are there exercises?
Yes! All Hacking with Swift+ articles end with challenges to help you take your learning further – code to try, problems to solve, questions to consider, and more.
Why do I need a Hacking with Swift account?
Your Hacking with Swift account links your Gumroad purchase to this site, so we can unlock your subscription. This account also allows you to post to the forums if you want to.
Does this give me all your books?
No; the articles produced for Hacking with Swift+ are all new and exclusive to subscribers. The books are separate products and will carry on receiving updates.
How can I cancel my subscription?
If at any point you want to cancel your Hacking with Swift+ subscription, you can do so directly through your Gumroad account. Your access to the subscriber-only content will remain active until your subscription term ends, at which point it will cease.
Will there be sales tax or VAT added to the price?
If you live in a country or state where tax is applied to digital purchases, that will be added to your subscription price. As you might imagine there isn't a lot I can do about that.
Will you still make free tutorials?
Yes, absolutely! I believe it's important to help everyone learn, so I will still be publishing as many free tutorials as I can. This won't be affected by Hacking with Swift+.