Create Custom Symbols with Multicolour Support for XCode

While developing an iOS / MacOS app in Swift recently, we had the requirement for a few symbols beyond what is available in SF Symbols. After trying unsuccessfully to create our own, we came across a fantastic Mac app Create Custom Symbols. This app very easily takes an svg created in your favourite drawing tool (shout out to Affinity Designer 2) and creates a custom symbol file compatible with Xcode. I noticed that the web page for Create Custom Symbols notes that it has no support for multicolor symbols, but it turns out that it isn’t necessary for multicolor support [Read on…]

Connecting Siri to Custom Intents in SwiftUI

Making a custom intent for Siri is pretty simple and there are some good articles on it out there but when I followed them it wasn’t working for me. Specifically asking Siri or invoking a shortcut was returning an error and my Intent handler wasn’t being called. The answer turned out to be really simple once I knew what I was doing. Hopefully this helps someone else. Creating the intent For SwiftUI this article is a good walk through, the Apple documentation is also good. What was missing for me is how Siri knows to invoke your extension in a [Read on…]