Play to Xcode lets you turn mockups into real apps

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Prototyping is an important stage in the development of a new app. And to make life even easier for developers, prototyping platform Play recently introduced Play to Xcode, which essentially turns mockups into real app projects.

Prototype your apps with Play

Play is a really cool platform for prototyping new app ideas. You can easily create interactive mockups to imagine how your app’s interface will look. The app has many of the core iOS interface elements, such as the date and time picker, buttons, text fields, sliders, and indicators. All you need to do is drag and drop them onto the canvas.

Changing the aspects of elements such as size and color is also super easy. You can also easily add a WebView, MapView, or CameraView to your mockup. As you would expect from a prototyping platform, users can create interactions for their mockups, imagining what happens when someone touches or presses a button, for example.

But the best part is Play to Xcode, a recently introduced feature that, as the name suggests, turns mockups into Xcode projects. It generates Swift code based on the elements you’ve chosen and even adds support for the right APIs such as for camera access, location services, gestures, and haptics. Play also integrates with popular third-party APIs such as Spotify and OpenAI.

The final export package includes an Xcode project with a MainApp pre-configured to render your Play Designs using a single build-and-run command. It contains a custom Swift Package, available in UIKit or SwiftUI, that includes fonts, assets, colors, variables, Components and Pages saved in Play. Additionally, the package includes the PlaySDK, which enables your Play designs to be rendered as native code.

I tried Play on my Mac and it’s really impressive to see a mockup being exported as an Xcode app project. Play can also be used to create live mockups through App Clips – as you probably saw in a recent iOS 19 concept we shared.

Anyone can try Play for free. However, if you want to unlock unlimited projects and remove the watermark from prototypes, you need to opt for one of the paid tiers. More details can be found on the Play website.