How to Make a Mac App (Beginner's Guide, 2026)

#What you need to make a Mac app

If you're working out how to make a Mac app, the good news is that the whole toolchain is free and it all comes from Apple. You need three things to start: a Mac, Xcode, and an Apple ID. Xcode is Apple's development environment, it's a free download from the Mac App Store, and it ships with everything you need: the Swift compiler, the code editor, the interface tools, the simulators you can ignore for now, and a Run button that builds and launches your app in one click. There's no separate SDK to buy and no license to unlock before you can write a line of code.

The Apple ID part is where people get nervous, so here's the honest version. A free Apple ID, the same one you already use for the App Store, lets you build and run your own app on your own Mac as much as you like. You only pay when you want to hand the app to other people. That's the paid Apple Developer Program, and I'll come back to exactly when you need it near the end. For learning, and for building something just for yourself, you never have to spend a cent.

#Swift, and SwiftUI or AppKit

Mac apps are written in Swift, Apple's modern language. It's readable, it's strict about the mistakes that used to crash apps, and it's the language every current Apple tutorial and code sample uses. You can technically still write in Objective-C, the older language, but there's no reason to start there in 2026.

For the interface you pick between two frameworks, and this is the one real fork in the road:

• SwiftUI is the modern, declarative one. You describe what the screen should look like for a given state, and the framework keeps the pixels in sync as that state changes. It means far less code, live previews right inside Xcode, and it's where Apple is spending its energy. Start here.
• AppKit is the older, imperative framework that has run Mac apps since the NeXT days. It's deeper and more granular, and a few Mac-specific corners still need it, but it's more code and a steeper first climb.

My advice for a first app is not subtle: write it in SwiftUI, and drop down to AppKit only for the specific things SwiftUI can't reach yet. The two mix freely in the same project, so this isn't a permanent decision. It's just where you spend your first week.

#Your first project and the run loop

Open Xcode, choose File then New then Project, pick the macOS App template, and select SwiftUI for the interface. Xcode hands you a running app before you've typed anything: a window with "Hello, world!" in it. Press Cmd-R and it launches on your desktop.

// the whole app, before you change a thing
import SwiftUI

@main
struct MyApp: App {
    var body: some Scene {
        WindowGroup {
            ContentView()
        }
    }
}

That loop, edit a view, press Run, see the change, is the entire rhythm of Mac development, and it's quick. From there you grow the app one view at a time. SwiftUI's canvas shows a live preview next to your code, so a lot of the tweaking happens without even launching the full app. When something misbehaves you set a breakpoint and step through it in the debugger, which is built into the same window. None of this needs the internet, an account, or a payment. You're just writing Swift and watching it run.

#NotchBay: a small menu-bar app I shipped

The best way to make this concrete is a real app, so here's one I built. NotchBay is a small macOS app written in Swift and SwiftUI. It lives in the menu bar rather than in a window: it's an "accessory" app, which in practice means one setting (LSUIElement in the app's Info.plist) that tells macOS to keep it out of the Dock and the app switcher. It just sits up top and does its job.

That accessory pattern is one of the friendliest ways to ship something useful without designing a whole windowed application. A menu-bar app can be tiny: a status item, a dropdown, a few SwiftUI views. NotchBay grew from that seed into something larger, it puts live activity into the MacBook's notch, but the skeleton is exactly what any first menu-bar app looks like. If the notch itself is what you want to build, I wrote a full architecture walkthrough in how to build a Dynamic Island for Mac, and the exact geometry of the cutout in the notch size breakdown.

#What shipping actually needs

Running your app on your own Mac is free. The moment you want someone else to run it, macOS gets protective, and this is the part beginners don't see coming. There are two legitimate routes, and both start with joining the Apple Developer Program, which is $99 a year (pricing can change, so check Apple's site).

Outside the App Store. You distribute the app yourself, as a DMG or zip from your own website. For macOS to trust it, you sign it with a Developer ID certificate and then notarize it: you upload the built app to Apple, an automated service scans it for malware, and Apple issues a ticket you staple onto the app. Without that, Gatekeeper warns users that the app is from an unidentified developer and makes it a chore to open. The flow, once you've set it up, is: archive the app, sign with Developer ID, run it through notarization (Apple's command-line tool xcrun notarytool handles the upload), staple the ticket, and ship the file. NotchBay goes out exactly this way, signed with a Developer ID and notarized, as a DMG from notchbay.com.

On the App Store. You submit the built app through Xcode, fill in the store listing, and it goes through Apple's review. Apple handles signing, distribution, and payments for you, in return for its cut and its rules, like sandboxing and review timelines. For a lot of first apps this is the simpler path, because you never touch certificates or hosting yourself.

#Where to go next

You don't need to have picked a route to begin. Make the app first: new SwiftUI project, build the thing you actually want, run it on your own Mac with your free Apple ID. Worry about Developer ID and notarization only once you have something worth handing to another person. That order matters, because the fastest way to never ship is to get tangled in signing before you have anything to sign.

If you want a first project with a clear finish line, a menu-bar utility is hard to beat: small surface, immediately useful, and it teaches you the whole pipeline in miniature. That's the shape NotchBay started as. If you're curious what a finished one looks like from the outside, the broader Dynamic Island for Mac guide walks the category, and the app I build is one download away.

#Frequently asked questions