One command builds your app, launches it on a simulator or a real device, and streams the logs into your terminal. sweetpad drives Xcode's own build tools underneath, so it's the same build with output a person can read.
Inside the CLI
One command builds the app, launches it, and streams its logs into your terminal. Press r to rebuild without leaving.
Save a Swift file and the running app updates in place, keeping its current screen and state. No rebuild, no relaunch.
One command wires SourceKit-LSP to SweetPad's build server, so completions work in Neovim, Zed, Helix, or Emacs.
Run the suite, narrow it to one test, watch for saves, and pull the screenshots a failing UI test recorded.
Run on a simulator by name, on a connected iPhone, or on your Mac. SweetPad remembers the choice, so you pick once.
Follow logs until a line matches, script an lldb session, or catch the first crash and get a structured report.
Every command speaks JSON and returns meaningful exit codes, so it drops into git hooks and pipelines.
Vendor-neutral skill files that teach a coding agent to drive the CLI instead of guessing at xcodebuild.
Commands, flags, config keys, and exit codes. The whole surface on one page.
Also: Swift Package dependencies, archiving and export, Tuist and XcodeGen, and git merge drivers that resolve .pbxproj conflicts semantically.
xcodebuild for humans
Same compiler, same build system, same app. What changes is what lands in your terminal: seven lines instead of 350, on the same build.
And when it breaks, the error is the third line instead of the forty-fourth.
Works with Xcode projects and workspaces, Tuist, XcodeGen, and Swift Packages.
🧩 Prefer to work in VS Code?
The SweetPad extension does the same builds, runs, and tests from the VS Code sidebar, and adds breakpoints, a native Testing panel, format-on-save, and autocomplete. It works in Cursor too.
It's a separate install, and it doesn't need the CLI. Which one do I need?
Try it on a project you already have
Install it, change into any Xcode project, and run one command. A Mac with Xcode is the whole dependency list.
Free and open source under the MIT license. SweetPad writes nothing into your project unless you ask it to, and brew uninstall sweetpad takes it all back out.