My Books

• macOS Apprentice: 3rd Edition

  The third edition of macOS Apprentice has been released!

  If you're a beginner or near-beginner who wants to start learning Swift, SwiftUI and AppKit for building Mac apps, then this is the book for you.

  This edition has been updated for Swift 6, macOS 26 and Xcode 26. It now includes details on using the new Icon Generator as well as major changes in the chapter that deals with embedding an AppKit view in a SwiftUI app. All the code and screenshots have been updated to reflect changes in Xcode, Swift, SwiftUI and macOS.

  Read More »

• Playing in the Mac App Sandbox

  Every app running on any Apple device, including a Mac, runs inside a sandbox by default. This keeps the app's data and settings isolated from other parts of the system so they cannot interfere with each other. As a Mac app developer, this is usually what you want, but sometimes the default sandbox settings do not allow your app to operate the way you need. In many cases you can work around this by adjusting the sandbox, but for some apps, you have to turn off sandboxing.

  In this article, I want to walk through what the sandbox does by default, how you can configure its settings for various tasks, when you need to turn it off, and why it's actually a good idea.

  Read More »

• NSTableView scroll bug in macOS Tahoe

  Recently. I was working with an AppKit app that uses an NSTableView to display long list of items. While testing the app on macOS Tahoe, I noticed a bug in the scrolling behavior: when I scrolled down from the top, the content rows would scroll into the header, making the top messy and unreadable. This sort of overlapping and unreadable text is a feature of the various OS 26s, but in this case, there wasn't a hint of transparency, so it looked like a bug to me.

  I did a lot of searching online, but couldn't find any references to this specific issue, so once I worked out the cause and a workaround, I thought I'd share it here, for anyone else who encounters this issue.

  Read More »

• Moving from Process to Subprocess

  For many years, I've used Process to call Terminal commands from my macOS apps. Process is an old technology, formerly known as NSTask. It works, but it's complicated to set up and it can have issues. The Swift language team have now published a modern alternative called Subprocess. Since I'm currently using Process in my Man Reader app and in my macOS Apps Step by Step book, I thought it was time to assess the new option and see if I should swap to it.

  Read More »

• Black Friday Sale

  For Black Friday 2025, my self-published books: macOS Apps Step by Step and Escape from Tutorial Hell are on sale for 30% off, from now until December 1st.

  If you're looking for a discount on macOS Apprentice, check it out the Kodeco web site when their Black Friday sale is live.

  Read More »