Updated July 4, 2023

Definition of Swift Version

Swift is a programming language that is extensively used for writing APIs and code that is understandable by macOS, watchOS, iOS, and beyond. Swift Programming language plays a pivotal role in Apple devices, and with every latest update in the mentioned devices, the Swift version for language also gets improvised. Swift Programming language, with other modern features like security, interactivity, flexibility, and fun, comes with different versions of Swift. Swift code in each version brings in a very nice, fun, interactive, and very safe design. Thus, any software with different Swift versions is quite fast.

Top Swift Versions

There are many versions of Swift, which aids in making some of the user-friendly experiences fun and interactive. A different version of Swift brings in different features and adaptability for Apple platforms, including interactivity, security, and fun. Memory is also maintained and managed automatically using deterministic references and counts. There are many swift versions which are as follows :

Swift 1.2 (Xcode 6.3+, swiftlang-602.0.49.6)

Swift 1.2 is part of Xcode 6.3 beta, which includes an enhanced version of Swift compiler with many new features of Swift languages. It mainly focuses on compiler improvement and enhancement like stability and performance improvement, which provides a better experience for working with Swift in Xcode. Compiler improvement includes Stability enhancement, Better compiler diagnostics, incremental builds, and faster executables. The language has involved many improved interactions concerning Objective-C and Swift. Some major and prominent changes are :

as! with failed casting: To make readers easily understand the code and maintain the code involves as! the operator which makes sure that casting gets failed at run time.
@objc attribute used with the objective: C can get exported using enums in Swift.
Nullability can be expressed using objective: C headers which Clang allows to express all the null pointers using Objective-C api.

Swift 2.1 (Xcode 7.2, swiftlang-700.1.101.19)

The migration of Swift 1.2 to a version of Swift 2.1 with Xcode 7.2 has added a lot many features and enhancements to the UI interactivity and adaptability, which includes features like Generics, Nullability annotation, inline results, Resources, auxiliary, and many more playgrounds. This Swift version helps in bundling all the features together and helps in app thinning in a sense, letting programmers understand the usage of on-demand resources, and bit code with a compilation of down into 64 or 32 executables as necessary. Also helps in slicing the artwork that gets incorporated into asset allocation.

Swift 2.2 (Xcode 7.3, swiftlang-703.0.18.1)

Swift 2.2. with Xcode 7.3 is mainly requires a Mac that should run on OS X version 10.11 or later, which involves many updated supports for iOS 9.3, watchOS 2.2, OS X version, and many feature enhancements in a row. The Swift 2.2 version with Xcode 7.3 provides improved warnings and diagnosis regarding compiler time, updated features, and interoperability with Objective-C. It also provides a Code completion feature, Debugger, Analyzer, Navigator, alternative toolchains, etc.

Swift 3.0 (Xcode 8.2, swiftlang-800.0.63)

Swift 3.0 with Xcode 8.2 comes with a significant number of changes where the primary difference between Swift 3 and Swift 2.3 also exists, which means that Swift 3.0 language somewhat supports Swift 2.3. and Swift 3.0 both, but still, it is not binary compatible with the application’s entire codebase; therefore, it is needed to keep a version in which the features are not deprecated; rather, the features like debugging, API interactivity, security, and data privacy should be much more enhanced. Playgrounds in Xcode only work with Swift3 and use proper templates and documentation in a proper format.

Swift 3.1 (Xcode 8.3b2, swiftlang-802.0.31.3)

Swift 3.1 version with Xcode 8.3b2 brings in all new features supporting initial support for tvOS. It makes use of many other features which is necessary for making the Swift language more robust and flexible in terms of OS related to tv; the codebase becomes clear and easily understandable by the programmers as it makes use of operators & <<= { associative_right precedence assignment }

Declarations of some functions with &<< = <T, which somehow supports the enhancement and multi-tasking functionalities needed by the tvOS.

Swift 4.2 (Xcode 10.0b1, swiftlang-1000.0.16.7)

Xcode 4.2 supports and adds features that support iOS 5, as well as many other enhancements to the application that take place with this Swift Version. It has a very interesting feature of automatic reference counting that includes a menu item that converts all targets to use automatic reference counting, which converts memory management for all Objective-C objects. Thus, making the entire version to be safe and lightning-fast with respect to memory management. It also uses many projects with a codebase that converts and enables users to use the Apple LLVM compiler. Xcode within this Swift version is used further for displaying a preview pane or dialog showing all changes containing the code to use ARC.

The default compiler comes out to be for iOS development in Xcode using Xcode 4.2 with LLVM 3.0. When it is used for comparison, then it is compiled with the GCC compiler with default Xcode 4.0 and LLVM-GCC compiler in Xcode 4.1 both the combination helps in generating better code generation and optimization than GCC. Many more features include location simulators, OpenGL ES Frame Capture, and many more.

Swift 5.1 (Xcode 11.3.1, shifting-1100.0.282.1)

Swift 5.1 with Xcode 11.3.1 is the latest release by Apple, used for Swift programming as part of Apple developer tools. Building on the design of Xcode 4 mainly focuses on features and improvements to improve the ability to adopt core functionality with new design user interfaces and subtle changes that incorporate Continuous integration with bots, testing, debugging, and usability.

Nightly build (swift/master, 1466a5e)

This is the latest Swift version which is still under exploration and beta format, which has some more enhanced and improvised features being used continuously with obvious improvement on top of the previous Swift version.

Swift 5.1.2(Xcode 11.2)

As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, the latest released version of Swift was Swift 5.5. At that time, Swift 5.1.2 was already an older version. However, please note that there might have been newer versions released since then. I recommend checking the official Swift website (swift.org) or the official GitHub repository for the latest information on Swift versions and releases.

Swift 5.1.3 (Xcode 11.3)

Swift 5.1.3 was a previous version of Swift, which was released on December 10, 2019. It included bug fixes and improvements over the earlier versions. If you have any specific questions or need assistance with Swift 5.1.3, feel free to ask!

Date	Swift version	Xcode
24-Mar-2020	5.2	11.4
15-Apr-2020	5.2.2	11.4.1
20-May-2020	5.2.4	11.5
16-Sep-2020	5.3	12
12-Nov-2020	5.3.1	12.2
14-Dec-2020	5.3.2	12.3
26-Jan-2021	5.3.2	12.4
26-Apr-2021	5.4	12.5
21-Jun-2021	5.4.2	12.5.1
20-Sep-2021	5.5	13
25-Oct-2021	5.5.1	13.1
13-Dec-2021	5.5.2	13.2
14-Mar-2022	5.6	13.3
16-May-2022	5.6.1	13.4
12-Sep-2022	5.7	14

https://www.swift.org/download/

New update version (2023) –

Swift 5.8 – Xcode – 14.3 (Date 30 March 2023)

Swift 5.8.1 – Xcode – 14.3.1 (Date 01 June 2023)

Conclusion

There are lot many versions of Swift that exist according to different platforms of iOS, tvOS, and many more, but they are still in discovery but indeed made Apple platforms quite versatile and flexible. It has made all the products accessible and user-friendly to both users and programmers with all its programming paradigms and robustness.

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