Re-Imagining SF Symbols Into Xcode

A shortcut from SF Symbol to Swift

Ever since Apple introduced, SF Symbols life has been so easy for developers. Particularly, for those who do not a have a design team to back them up.

The pros of using SF Symbols has been documented well over the last year. There is no need to manage assets and the app size remains same irrespective of the number of symbols used. Seems like an all rosy path.

But we have one good old problem. It can even be attributed to muscle memory. To copy the symbol’s name to Xcode, we end up pressing Cmd + C, most of the time. And Xcode stops compiling when our code looks like this.

Its quite hard to rewire ourselves, only when working with SF Symbols app.

After successfully copying the symbol’s name, we modify the symbol to make is more suited for our app. Every time we add modifiers, we hope Xcode helps us with auto completion or we remember the modifiers exactly and type them correctly, so that the live preview remains live.

Then there will be times, when we might want to play around with multiple symbols, after applying your desired modifiers. So, we go the SF Symbols app, search or browse for the symbol, copy the symbol’s name, paste it into Xcode and again, hope that we did nothing to break the live preview.

Don’t you think this entire workflow needs some improvement? Here comes “Swimbols”.

Swimbols — A swifty way to add SF Symbols into Xcode

Swimbols helps you overcome the pain points explained above and improve your workflow, there by giving you a productivity boost.

Here’s how your workflow will look like with Swimbols.

Browse through the categories or search for a symbol, select one and start applying modifiers. The preview is live. Just swipe left to delete any modifier. Drag and drop to re-order modifiers. Whenever you want to change the symbol, just select it. All your modifiers are applied and you can see changes without any delay. When you are happy with the design, copy code to use in your SwiftUI/UIKit project.

Swimbols is available on the App Store for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Check it out and let us know what you think.

The roadmap for Swimbols is here and you can suggest features or post issues. Keep an eye on our Twitter handle for future updates.

Happy Coding!