Swift in 2025: New Features and Changes for iOS/macOS

Swift in 2025: Evolution of the Language for iOS and macOS

The Swift programming language continues to actively develop, and 2025 has become an important milestone in its history. Apple is consistently improving performance, expanding the capabilities of the standard library, and simplifying development for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. In this article, we will break down the key innovations of Swift in 2025 that are already available to developers or will appear in upcoming releases.

1. Swift 6: Stability and Performance

In 2025, the final version of Swift 6 gained widespread adoption. The main focus of this release is eliminating the shortcomings of previous versions and increasing compilation speed.

Main changes in Swift 6:

• Full support for the strict concurrency model — the compiler now guarantees the absence of data races at the build stage. The async/await model has become mandatory for working with asynchronous tasks.
• Improved ownership system — new annotations _borrowing and _consuming allow for more precise memory management without unnecessary copying.
• Compilation time optimization — Swift 6 compiles 20-30% faster than Swift 5.9, thanks to new incremental dependency analysis.

Example: Strict concurrency checking

import Foundation

// Swift 6: the compiler will not allow incorrect usageactor Counter {    private var value = 0        func increment() {        value += 1    }        func getValue() -> Int {        return value    }}

let counter = Counter()Task {    // Safe call via await    await counter.increment()    print(await counter.getValue())}

2. New Macros and Metaprogramming

The macro system, introduced in Swift 5.9, received a significant expansion in 2025. Developers can now create attribute macros that are applied to entire types or functions.

Key innovations:

• Attached macros — macros that modify structures, classes, or protocols (e.g., automatic generation of Codable).
• Expression macros — allow generating code based on expressions (e.g., logging).
• Freestanding macros — work as standalone statements (e.g., #warning or #error).

Example: Macro for automatic Equatable implementation

import Foundation

// Swift 2025: @Equatable macro@Equatablestruct User: Codable {    let id: Int    let name: String    let email: String}

// The compiler will automatically generate:// extension User: Equatable {//     static func == (lhs: User, rhs: User) -> Bool { ... }// }

let user1 = User(id: 1, name: "Alice", email: "alice@example.com")let user2 = User(id: 1, name: "Alice", email: "alice@example.com")print(user1 == user2) // true

3. SwiftUI 2025: Reactive UI Without Compromises

The SwiftUI framework in 2025 received long-awaited improvements that make it a full-fledged replacement for UIKit even for complex interfaces.

New SwiftUI capabilities:

• Observation with dependency tracking — the new @Observable macro replaces @StateObject and @ObservedObject, automatically updating only those parts of the UI that depend on changed properties.
• NavigationStack with deep customization — support for nested navigations and Universal Links.
• Animations on GPU — all standard SwiftUI animations now run on Metal, providing 60 FPS even on older devices.