How is Swift Assist different from Predictive Code Completion?

Swift Assist and Predictive Code Completion are both features in Xcode 16 designed to enhance the coding experience, but they serve different purposes and operate in distinct ways.

Swift Assist

• Purpose: Swift Assist is a comprehensive coding companion that helps with a wide range of coding tasks, from answering coding questions to experimenting with new APIs and prototyping.
• Functionality: It uses a larger and more powerful model that runs in the cloud to provide personalized code suggestions and assistance. It can help you quickly visualize ideas, create structs, add images, and more.
• Privacy: Your code is never stored on the server and is only used for processing your requests. Apple does not use it for training machine learning models.
• Use Case: Ideal for tasks like exploring new frameworks, experimenting with new ideas, and prototyping.

Predictive Code Completion

• Purpose: Predictive Code Completion is focused on enhancing the traditional code completion feature by predicting entire statements and methods based on the surrounding code.
• Functionality: It uses a unique model specifically trained for Swift and Apple SDKs, running locally on your Mac. This ensures your code remains private and provides fast results, even when offline.
• Integration: It integrates with your project symbols to customize suggestions and can use comments and variable names to improve predictions.
• Use Case: Best for speeding up the coding process by providing inline code suggestions and completing code based on the context of your project.

Summary

• Swift Assist: A cloud-based, comprehensive coding assistant for a wide range of tasks, emphasizing privacy and security.
• Predictive Code Completion: A local, context-aware code completion tool that enhances traditional code completion with predictive capabilities.

For more details, you can refer to the Platforms State of the Union session.