Use of Swift in iOS 13 has doubled compared to iOS 12

By Stephen Warwick
published

What you need to know

  • Use of Swift has doubled in iOS 13 compared to 12.
  • There are 141 binaries using Swift in iOS 13, up from 66 in iOS 12.
  • Swift was originally announced at WWDC 2014, 5 years ago.

Use of Apple's programming language Swift has vastly increased in the latest version of iOS. In iOS 13, Apple's use of Swift has more than doubled compared to iOS 12.

The programming language was originally announced at WWDC in 2014. It can be used by developers to create apps in macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS and more. Of course, it's also used by Apple inside of Apple software, and the first Swift-based iOS app was Calculator in iOS 9, back in 2015.

In this year's software, there are 141 binaries that contain Swift. This doesn't necessarily mean that an entire app is based on Swift, and it could be as little of one line of code that contains the language.

The research was carried out by blogger Timac and picked up via 9to5 Mac, which notes that much of Apple's own software is still written in Objective-C. It seems that rather than overhaul its entire software coding (no doubt a logistical nightmare), Apple is slowly choosing to phase in Swift as and when it thinks best. Afterall, if it ain't broke...

You can see the graph charting Apple's own adoption of Swift into iOS below!

Stephen Warwick
Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design.

Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9

3 Comments
  • I sure hope this isn't the reason iOS 13 and 13.1 has been such a godawful experience for me. I listen to audiobooks all the time on my iPhone. The iOS 13 Books.app crashes so thoroughly that I have to restart the phone to make it work again, and I've been having to restart it 1-4 times daily since I installed iOS 13. This iPhone never touched the betas, and I've never jailbroken a phone. Interestingly, it mostly seems to be when I interact with the UI (as opposed to just pushing a button on my EarPods to resume play). I'm afraid to open the app now because there seems to be a greater than 50% chance of it breaking the app/ Force-quitting the app doesn't help. I filed a radar with Apple but no response yet. I'm about to revert to iOS 12, pain in the *** that that'll be.
  • I doubt it, new iOS releases have always had some issues. Try going into Settings > General > iPhone Storage, and scroll down until you find the "Books" app. Click on it, then click the red text that removes the app and all its data. Once you've done that, reinstall the app from the App Store, that might help.
  • "Afterall, if it ain't broke..." If it ain't broke, don't optimize it? This saying doesn't work in the technology era, otherwise we'd have really slow, virus-infested devices. Software has to constantly evolve, if not just for optimization and security