Recently, I've been working on a Swift Package with some strings that I wanted to localize. Apple's documentation on this topic seems to be a bit outdated. The documentation still suggests using language-specific directories for localizing resources and strings.

But, at WWDC 2023, Apple introduced String Catalogs. It's much more handy - just a JSON file that Xcode can fill with all the strings that need to be localized. Most of the examples you can find are about apps, not packages. So, I've spent some time trying to figure out how to use String Catalogs in a Swift package.

Good news - it's possible!. Let's start with an example Swift Package. Here's an example Package.swift file:

// swift-tools-version: 6.0
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
    platforms: [
        .iOS(.v15),
        .macOS(.v12),
    ],
    products: [
        .library(
            name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
            targets: ["SwiftPackageLocalized"]),
    ],
    targets: [
        .target(
            name: "SwiftPackageLocalized"),
    ]
)

So, the first step is to add the defaultLocalization parameter:

let package = Package(
    name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
    defaultLocalization: "en", // set the default localization
    …
)

Next step - add a Strings Catalog in Xcode (File → New → File from Template…):

Now we can add our Strings Catalog to resources processing in Package.swift. The final file will look like this:

// swift-tools-version: 6.0
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.

import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
    name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
    defaultLocalization: "en",
    platforms: [
        .iOS(.v15),
        .macOS(.v12),
    ],
    products: [
        .library(
            name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
            targets: ["SwiftPackageLocalized"]),
    ],
    targets: [
        .target(
            name: "SwiftPackageLocalized",
            resources: [
                .process("Localizable.xcstrings")
            ]
        ),
    ]
)

Finally, we can use localized strings in our code:

let myString = String(
    localized: "MY_STRING",
    defaultValue: "Wow, a localized string!",
    bundle: Bundle.module
)

Build the package, and you will see that the Strings Catalog now has strings and is ready for localization to other languages:

In a next post I'll show how to add translations automatically with AI help.

One of the new features in macOS Sequoia is iPhone Mirroring. You can connect to your iPhone, see its screen and control it.

My Mac is using 2 folders to store apps: one is in the user folder ~/Applications, the second is the system applications folder at /Applications.

One day I created a search filter in Finder and saved it to have all the available apps in one place, also did put it to the sidebar in the Favourites section.

But also I love to have a shortcut in the Dock. So I've added a grid here too. It worked as I expected until I updated to macOS Sequoia and tried the iPhone Mirroring app once. Now the grid shows some apps from my iPhone too:

An interesting thing is that only Dock's grid shortcut shows the apps from my iPhone, but not the search in Finder.

And here comes the funny part - that's what you'll see if you will try to launch an app from your iPhone:

macOS 18.0 or later? Really? I wonder if that's some feature planned for a future macOS update. Will see :)

An update for AppMetric, version 1.12.0, has been released. I've been working on it in my spare time. What's new in recent versions:

• Apple reviewers, for some reason, don't like OAuth authorization via Safari anymore, so I had to redo it using an embedded window with WKWebView. I hope that in the next SwiftUI, its own WebView will finally appear, so I won't have to use a wrapper anymore.
• Added a button for quick access to app statistics on the Appmetrica website.
• Added viewing of statistics as charts — both for each individual metric and all metrics combined. All this just 7 years after one of the users requested adding charts :)
• Added interface translation into several languages. Fortunately, with the help of AI, it has become very easy.

Recently, I’ve been updating docs for the CouchdbClient library. After struggling with some phrases, I decided to try AI to do that for me. Microsoft has Copilot as part of Bing search in the Edge browser.

So, I asked it to generate docs and I was surprised by how good it is. My message was “Improve docs for that Swift code:” followed by the source code of a function.

It got the context correctly, analyzed the source code, described how it works, and what errors it can throw. It even added some comments to the code itself. And I couldn’t have written anything better than this by myself. So, I just asked it to do that for each public function in the library and now I have some nice documentation. And all that for free within the Edge browser. The only limitation is the message length, so I had to send function after function carefully. Using an API should be faster, but since I have only one Swift file, I just used the browser.

Later, I tried Google’s Gemini, which they’re giving access to after the recent I/O. It is also good, but not as good as Copilot. Apple’s DocC doesn’t seem to like the format of the generated documentation (especially Throws section), so some parts were missing. Also, Gemini doesn’t add as many details as Copilot does, so Copilot is my favorite so far:

Time to use AI more often for such routine tasks.

Updated AppMetric for macOS — a client for Yandex's AppMetrica service.

• Fixed an error where selecting today's date would not update when the day changed.
• Added formatting for metric numbers (depending on the system language and region).
• Minor fixes.

Have you ever needed to package your application for distribution on macOS? The solution is simpler than you might think, and it's right at your fingertips in the Terminal. I recently stumbled upon a handy bash function that streamlines the creation of a DMG (Disk Image) file. Here's how to set it up:

Step 1: Edit Your Profile

nano ~/.zprofile

Step 2: Add the Bash Function

Next, insert the following function into your .zprofile. This script utilizes the hdiutil command, which is built into macOS, to create an HFS+ filesystem within a DMG file.

dmg(){
    hdiutil create -fs HFS+ -srcfolder "$1" -volname "$2" "$2.dmg"
}

Step 3: Save and Source Your Profile

After adding the code, save the changes and exit `nano`. To make the function available immediately without restarting your terminal, source your profile:

source ~/.zprofile

Step 4: Use the Function

Now, you can easily create a DMG file for any folder or application. For example, to create a DMG for the 'ModulbankInformer.app', simply run:

dmg ModulbankInformer.app ModulbankInformer

This command will generate a ModulbankInformer.dmg file with the contents of the ModulbankInformer.app directory.

And there you have it - a quick and efficient way to create DMG files directly from your Terminal!

And here we go, one more new version of the CouchDB client library. After the recent post about 1.4.0, Swift on Server released a new version of async-http-client that includes a new implementation of the client singleton. Now it's HTTPClient.shared, so I've updated the CouchDB library to adopt that change. This also means that you no longer need to call httpClient.syncShutdown() if the singleton is used. Additionally, they've bumped the minimum Swift version to 5.8 (which I aslo did in version 1.4.0 of the CouchDB client library). So, I'm keeping the library up to date.

Changelog:

• Bumped the minimum version of async-http-client to the new 1.21.0. If you can't use it in your project, you can still stay on 1.4.0.
• The library will now use HTTPClient.shared (new in async-http-client 1.21.0) internally for requests if no EventLoopGroup is provided.
• No more internal calls for httpClient.syncShutdown() in case of HTTPClient.shared usage.

CouchDB Client on GitHub | Documentation with examples and tutorials.