Nil Coalescing Newsletter - November 2025

Hi there,

The festive season is almost here, and it feels like everyone is preparing for the end-of-year break. This month, we've been wrapping up the work we wanted to finish before the holidays and have begun planning for next year.

I've now finished refreshing my books for iOS 26 and Swift 6.2, and they are all currently on sale with 30% off for Black Friday, so I've included the promo details and a summary of the latest changes below.

"Integrating SwiftUI into UIKit Apps" updated for iOS 26

While SwiftUI is becoming the go-to choice for many new projects, we often have to maintain and update older apps built with UIKit. Luckily, these two frameworks can coexist in the same codebase, and we can gradually adopt SwiftUI, bringing in new features without rewriting the entire app from scratch. I first released "Integrating SwiftUI into UIKit Apps" three years ago, when SwiftUI was still very young, but the guidance in the book is still relevant today. And as the years go on, the interoperability between UIKit and SwiftUI continues to improve, making it easier to bring the two together.

The latest update to the book adds support for iOS 26 and adopts the new Liquid Glass design across all projects and reference screenshots. It also shows how to take advantage of the new improvement in UIKit — native support for Observation. Now, if we read properties of an @Observable class inside update methods, UIKit records those reads and wires up the dependencies so it can invalidate and update the right views without requiring extra manual logic on our part. This makes sharing data between UIKit and SwiftUI components a lot simpler. You can learn more about this improvement in my blog post Automatic property observation in UIKit with @Observable or try it out in a project by following along with the sample chapter of the book.

If you already own a copy of "Integrating SwiftUI into UIKit Apps" you can download the new version now. In case you need a fresh access link, you can request it on the request access form.

If you haven't checked out the book yet, now is the perfect time to grab a copy and take advantage of the Black Friday deal. The book is aimed at UIKit developers who want to start adopting SwiftUI incrementally in their existing projects, and while some prior SwiftUI knowledge would be helpful, it's not required to follow the tutorials.

"Swift Gems" updated for Swift 6.2

For developers who have been working with Swift for a while and are looking to pick up some advanced techniques that can be easily applied in any Swift project, I have a book called "Swift Gems". I released it last year, and have already updated it twice this year, adding fresh insights as the Swift language evolves. This month's update is focused on features introduced in Swift 6.2, such as inline arrays, default values in string interpolation, and raw identifiers, as well as some Swift concurrency improvements.

If you have already purchased "Swift Gems", you can get the updated version now from the book page, and view the detailed list of changes in the release notes. If you haven't accessed the book for a while and need a fresh link, you can request it by filling in the request access form.

"Swift Gems" is also currently on sale at 30% off, so it's a great opportunity to get 100+ advanced Swift tips and techniques for a very affordable price. All the tips in the book are focused solely on the Swift language and the Swift Standard library, so they can be applied anywhere — from iOS and macOS apps to Swift on the server.

"Exsto" app refreshed with Liquid Glass

While I was working on updating my books, Matt has been busy refreshing our app Exsto for iOS 26 and macOS 26, adopting the new Liquid Glass appearance.

If you are looking for an app that lets you create digital art in an unusual and relaxing way, sparks your imagination, and helps you generate new artistic concepts, make sure to check out Exsto.

"Swift Academy" podcast episode released

Last month I met with Walid SASSI from the "Swift Academy" podcast to record an episode about iOS 26 and the new Liquid Glass design language, SwiftUI evolution, and accessibility in iOS apps. This episode is now live and you can watch it on Walid's YouTube channel.

In the second part of the episode, I showed a quick demo of my new app for coffee lovers Breve, shared some insights from building custom Liquid Glass components, and walked through a few adjustments needed to make the app more accessible.

New YouTube video on supporting Dynamic Type

Continuing the topic of accessibility, I've released a new YouTube video sharing a few tips for supporting Dynamic Type in SwiftUI apps.

The video covers techniques for working with system and custom fonts, ensuring the interface adjusts properly to larger text sizes by tweaking scroll behavior, using the ScaledMetric API to customize padding and spacing, and updating the UI based on the user’s current text size setting.

Many iPhone users rely on the Dynamic Type feature to make reading content easier, so it's important that we make our apps flexible enough to handle larger text sizes without compromising the experience.

Conference plans for 2026

Looking ahead to next year, I have been making plans for attending and speaking at a few conferences, and I already have two confirmed.

I will be traveling to Singapore in January to speak at iOS Conf SG, and then to Finland in February to speak at the ARCtic Conference. Matt will be joining me for both trips, so the full Nil Coalescing team will be there.

I'm really looking forward to both events. It will be good to meet members of our iOS community in person, exchange knowledge, and inspire each other to keep building and learning.

Black Friday book discounts

All of my books and book bundles are currently on sale for Black Friday: 30% off! It's the biggest discount I do, so it's a great time to grab a book or a bundle if you haven't already. You can choose any of my Swift and SwiftUI books from the books website, or any combination of books from the bundles page. The discount will be automatically applied at checkout while the sale is on.

Books by Natalia Panferova

The sale will be running until the end of next week and will end on December 7.

Thank you for following and supporting our work. Have a great and festive December, and I will catch you again in the next issue of this newsletter between Christmas and the New Year.