These award-winning apps showcase young coders’ bright ideas

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Winners created an interesting array of apps in the Swift Student Challenge.
Winners created an interesting array of apps in the Swift Student Challenge.
Photo: Apple

Just under two weeks from its Worldwide Developers Conference 2022, Apple notified winners Tuesday of its annual Swift Student Challenge. Along with typical prizes for winners as in recent years — outerwear and a pin set — the company is giving winning students a pair of AirPods Pro.

This year’s winners made an interesting variety of apps, according to quick replies to queries via Twitter.

Winners of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge win prizes for interesting apps

This year’s WWDC Swift Student Challenge involved app development via Apple’s Swift Playgrounds 4. As in previous years, the contest had students from around the world create their choice of Swift project with the goal of making an interactive scene that could be experienced in three minutes.

After the deadline to submit projects in late April, Apple started notifying winners of the challenge on Tuesday. Winners get free, one-year membership to Apple’s Developer program along with WWDC22 outerwear and a pin set like it has the past few years. Last year, the outerwear included a hoody and beanie plus six fun WWDC21 pins.

But this year Apple added AirPods Pro to further recognize the students’ “hard work.”

What are the winning apps all about?

Reaching out to a number of the winning students, Cult of Mac received several replies. They indicated that the winning apps covers lot of ground. There are games, educational resources, exercise aids and even an app that uses machine learning to diagnose Parkinson’s disease.

One student from India, Arima Jain (@ArimaJain), told us she works as a graphic designer for a company called Digital Hole Pvt. Ltd. She has contributed to games like Clumsy Bomb and Wotah Bowl. But the one she won the Swift Student Challenge with is a puzzle game.

“I’ve entirely designed and partially contributed to the development part of several iOS games using Sprite Kit,” she said. “The game I’ve submitted for Swift Student Challenge is now live on the App Store: Crack the Code: IQ Riddles.”

Here are some more replies about the apps student winners made:

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