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Introduction

SweetPad is a VSCode extension that allows you to build and run your Xcode projects for iOS, macOS, and watchOS applications in VSCode. It's built on top of the Xcode CLI tools and several other open-source tools like xcode-build-tools, xcbeautify, swift-format, and others.

info

You still need to have Xcode installed on your machine to use the extension because it heavily relies on the Xcode CLI tools to build and run your project.

Getting Started​

tip

This tutorial also works for Cursor, an AI Code Editor that is a fork of VSCode.

First, install VSCode and the extension from the VSCode Marketplace.

Install extension

Now, you need to create an Xcode project using Xcode or some other tools. We highly recommend giving XcodeGen or Tuist a try, as they allow you to define the structure of your project in configuration files. However, Xcode is also fine.

Xcode

Once you have a working Xcode project, open the project root folder in VSCode. Pay attention that you need to open the root folder of the project, not the .xcodeproj or .xcworkspace folder itself.

If you installed the extension correctly, you should see the SweetPad lollipop icon 🍭 in the left sidebar of the editor. This is the main entry point for using the extension.

The main panels of the extension are:

  1. Build panel — shows the list of schemes and the "Launch" button to build and run the project.
  2. Destination panel — shows the list of available simulators and devices to run the project on.

Opened project

To start building and running the project, click on the play button next to the scheme and wait until the build process finishes. The extension will then boot up the simulator and run the app.

That's it! You have successfully built and run your first Xcode project in VSCode. For the next steps, we recommend:

Demo​

Here is a short demo of building and running an Xcode project in VSCode: