MacAssed

Putting the Mac back in SwiftUI.

MacAssed is an attempt to recover some of the functionality that modern
minimalist interfaces have misplaced. Welcome to the Lost & Found.

---

Status: design sketch (pre-alpha). This repository is the design of the library — a settled API shape with illustrative, not-yet-implemented bodies. It intentionally doesn’t build yet (no import-and-ship), and the SwiftUI layer is Apple-only besides. What’s real and runnable is the plan, the API surface in Sources/, and the MacAssedCore behavior described by the tests.

The problem

SwiftUI made shipping an app so frictionless that the easy path now leads somewhere austere: a list you can’t sort, can’t properly multi-select, can’t type-select, that forgets its columns the moment you quit. The affordances desktop users have relied on for thirty years didn’t get rejected — they got skipped, because reaching for them stopped being the default.

John Gruber put the specific case plainly in August 2026, on TestFlight’s un-sortable build list:

”You can still do this in Mac-assed Mac apps. But in apps like TestFlight you can’t.” — Daring Fireball

MacAssed reimplements those table-stakes affordances on top of SwiftUI, as a foundation of stable, sensible defaults — so an app built The Swift Way can be a Mac-assed app again.

The 30-second version

// Before — an austere SwiftUI list.
List(files, selection: $selection) { Text($0.name) }

// After — Finder-style sort, ⇧/⌘/marquee selection, type-select,
// keyboard nav, column resize/reorder/hide, and autosave. All on by default.
MATable(files, selection: $selection) {
    MAColumn("Name", value: \.name)
    MAColumn("Size", value: \.size, align: .trailing)
}
.columnAutosave("Files")

Batteries included: you opt out of affordances, not in.

The three drawers

Lost & Found	The catalog — every misplaced affordance, tagged 🔦 gone or 🥾 needs a Swift kick.
Tools	Things MacAssed gives you to put them back — MATable, MASort, MASelection, …
Examples	Evidence that this was, in fact, possible.

Engineering details — the two-module architecture, platform matrix, roadmap, and what this is not (SwiftUIX, the “mac-arsed” skill) — live in DESIGN.md.

Install

// Package.swift
.package(url: "https://github.com/kimslawson/mac-assed.git", branch: "main")

import MacAssed        // views, modifiers, commands, chrome
import MacAssedCore    // just the UI-free engine, if you want the behavior not our views

Requires macOS 14 / iOS 17 / visionOS 1 for the SwiftUI layer. MacAssedCore builds anywhere Swift does, Linux CI included.

On the name

A ”Mac-assed Mac app” is a running term of art among Mac developers — an app that wholeheartedly embraces the platform instead of settling for a lowest-common-denominator port. Coined by Collin Donnell, popularized by Brent Simmons, and used recurrently by Gruber since 2020. We put the link in the README so the homage is self-sourcing.

And the MA prefix is a small joke that means it. Old Apple frameworks prefixed types — NS, UI, CG, MK — because Objective-C had no namespaces. Swift made that “unnecessary,” and the prefixes vanished in the same cultural moment the UI conventions did. So MacAssed brings the prefix back: MATable, MASortDescriptor, MASelection. The branding does the thing the library does — recovers a good convention that got dropped for looking old-fashioned. (The module is MacAssed; the types are MA… — exactly Foundation’s relationship to its NS… types.)

Naming conventions

Swift casing splits names into types (nouns) and members (the things you do to them). The MA prefix follows along — uppercase on a type, lowercase on a method. The leading dot is call syntax (view.padding()), not part of the name.

You write	What it is	Case rule
MATable, MASort	a type (a thing)	UpperCamelCase → prefix shows as MA
.maTypeSelect(…)	a modifier on Apple’s View	lowerCamelCase → ma; dot calls it on the view
.columnAutosave(…)	a method on MATable	lowerCamelCase, no prefix — the type already namespaces it
.platinum, .trailing	an enum case (a fixed option)	lowerCamelCase; dot = the option, on the inferred type

Same grammar Apple uses: NSString / UIView are Upper with the prefix; their members (view.backgroundColor) are lower.

One caveat on MA. Apple’s own MediaAccessibility framework also uses the MA prefix (MACaptionAppearanceDomain, …). Swift module-qualifies (MacAssed.MASelection vs MediaAccessibility.MACaptionAppearanceDomain), so there’s no hard clash — and it’s the accessibility framework a thoughtful Mac app is likely to import, so the two will co-occur. The rule: never mint a MacAssed type whose name Apple already ships (steer clear of the MACaptionAppearance… / MAAudibleMedia… families). Our current names are all clear.

Contributing

The catalog is meant to grow with the community — a foundation that lives and flexes with Swift. Missing an affordance, or want to claim a roadmap item? See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT (intended) — see LICENSE.