Here’s a first look at the new Swift Playgrounds 4 ahead of official release - 9to5Mac

Although the company never said when it would become available, Apple is now inviting some developers to try out Swift Playgrounds 4 ahead of the official release of the update.

According to 9to5Mac’s sources, Apple has been inviting developers in recent weeks to join the Swift Playgrounds 4 beta program through TestFlight.

Developers must agree to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in order to gain access to the beta app, which means that they cannot share details about Swift Playgrounds 4 publicly.

For those unfamiliar, Swift Playgrounds is an Apple app to help developers and students learn the company’s Swift programming language.

App projects can be opened and edited in Swift Playgrounds or in Xcode, and when they’re ready, users can build a real app and submit it directly to the App Store right from their iPad.

This year, Apple will finally let developers build and submit their Swift Playgrounds projects directly to the App Store, which is huge for iPad users.

One of our sources who has access to the Swift Playgrounds 4 shared some screenshots with 9to5Mac, which show how developers can submit their projects to App Store Connect without having to build the app using Xcode on a Mac.