It's time to install Swift on your own Mac computer!
Swift 4 is used by developers for building iOS apps. From this point on, we are going to focus on using Swift to build our own iOS apps.
Note: Xcode 9 requires a Mac running macOS 10.13.2 or later. For this you should have MacBook Pro/Air mid 2010 or newer.
Installing Xcode
To learn how to make iOS apps using Swift, we'll need to download and install Xcode. If you already have Xcode installed, please confirm that you have Xcode 9. Otherwise, you should update it to version 9 to make sure that apps we make in this course work on your system as well.
What is Xcode?
Xcode is an IDE, or an integrated development environment. It consists of a code editor, tools to compile and run the code, and other tools which are helpful during programming such as debugging tools, etc.
Installing Xcode
- You can download Xcode from the apple website (Download Link) or you can search it on the Mac App Store. Note that this requires a 5GB download.
- You'll need to have an Apple ID before installing Xcode. If you don't have one, you'll be asked to create one.
- In the process of installing Xcode, you might be asked to update your Mac OS version.
- The OS update can be found in the Updates tab of the Mac App Store, we recommend to update it to the latest version.
- After the installation of the latest Mac OS, go to the Mac App Store and download Xcode or follow the above link.
- To check your installation, just try launching Xcode.
Checking Xcode version
If you already have Xcode installed, we recommend you to update it to the latest version. In particular, please make sure your Xcode version is 9.0 or above.
You can check the version by launching Xcode. If the below screen doesn't show up after you launch Xcode, then click on Xcode on the top-left (in the menu bar) and click on "About Xcode".
