whaat's new in swift 6.2

In Swift 6.2, several new features and improvements have been introduced to enhance productivity and performance for Swift developers. Here are some of the key updates:

1. Strict Memory Safety: A new feature called Strict Memory Safety requires explicit acknowledgment of unsafe APIs in the source code, helping identify parts of the code that need extra security attention. This is particularly important for components handling untrusted input, such as in WebKit and the Messages app.

2. Concurrency Improvements: Swift 6.2 makes concurrency more approachable by staying single-threaded by default until concurrency is explicitly introduced. This change helps prevent data races and makes it easier to write data race-free code.

3. Development Workflow Enhancements: There are improvements in writing, building, and debugging Swift code. For instance, the Swift extension in VS Code now supports background indexing, improving editor features like "Jump to Definition."

4. Performance Updates: The release includes performance enhancements such as inline arrays, which allow arrays with a fixed size to be stored on the stack, and a new span type that provides a safe alternative to pointers for fast memory access.

5. Library Updates: Swift 6.2 modernizes more of Foundation's API surface and introduces new APIs for everyday programming tasks, such as launching subprocesses.

6. Embedded Swift: This subset of Swift allows code targeting constrained environments like firmware for embedded devices, expanding its use in low-level software.

7. Tooling Improvements: Explicitly built modules are now enabled by default in Xcode 26, speeding up the evaluation of commands in the debugger.

For more detailed information, you can watch the session What’s new in Swift (00:00:00) from WWDC 2025.