November 6, 2025
UPDATE
Developers decode their journeys from app ideas to App Store
Meet three Swift Student Challenge winners crafting immersive apps with a uniquely human touch; submissions for next year’s challenge open February 6
Every year, Apple’s Swift Student Challenge celebrates the creativity and ingenuity of student developers from around the world, inviting them to use Swift and Xcode to solve real-world problems in their own communities and beyond. Submissions for the 2026 challenge will open February 6 for three weeks, and students can prepare with new Develop in Swift tutorials and Meet with Apple code-along sessions.
Former Swift Student Challenge winners Brayden Gogis, Adrit Rao, and Sofia Sandoval have experienced firsthand how app development can unlock creativity and curiosity, strengthen their critical thinking, and lay the foundation for exciting careers. By harnessing cutting-edge technologies like machine learning and spatial computing, they’ve gone on to craft full-fledged apps and games imbued with warmth and a uniquely human touch.
Below, the three share their journeys in app creation, from learning how to code, to submitting their projects to the Swift Student Challenge, to launching their first apps and games on the App Store.
Brayden Gogis doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t completely fixated on games in all forms. “In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we wanted to be when we grew up, I dressed up like a game show host,” he recalls.
In second grade, when he first discovered the App Store on his iPod touch, that enthusiasm ratcheted up to a whole new level. “My dad showed me a game that was made by a 14-year-old, and I thought that was so cool,” says Gogis.
Making a game for a traditional console felt out of reach, but creating a game for the App Store felt accessible, so he scoured the web for tutorials and learned everything he could about coding.
When Gogis entered the 2019 Swift Student Challenge, he won with his now-published app Solisquare, a reimagined take on the classic card game with quick gestures and an intuitive, hands-on feel. “SwiftUI is really helpful for making apps and games feel super interactive, because I can quickly prototype not only how something’s going to look, but how it’s going to feel,” Gogis says.
The 21-year-old, now a senior at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, brought that same personal touch to his latest App Store release, Joybox, a social media app that allows users to create groups and add photos, stories, and songs to their collective Joybox, and select a time to open the box together. Built with SwiftUI and UIKit, the app features elaborate backgrounds, morphing gradients, and haptics to replicate the sense of physically writing down a memory and putting it into a box, and allows users to share songs via integration with Apple Music.
“The reason I enjoy coding is because I love people, and I want to improve people’s lives in whatever way I can,” says Gogis. “It’s so good for your brain to take five minutes every day and focus on what you’re grateful for, and share that with other people.”
Adrit Rao was first introduced to block programming when he moved to Palo Alto, California, in elementary school, and he taught himself the basics of coding during the COVID-19 pandemic. From the very beginning, he was struck by the problem-solving possibilities app creation enables.
“The App Store offers a straightforward way to share what I’ve built with people beyond my own community,” the three-time Swift Student Challenge winner explains. “When you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to reach people, you can instead focus on the second step: What kind of problem are you going to target, and what kind of accessible solution are you going to build?”
Rao, a premed student who recently began his freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, is especially interested in the ways technology can help improve accessibility and bridge connections. He’s currently putting the finishing touches on EyeSee, an app that taps into powerful on-device algorithms on iPhone to simulate the experience of various eye conditions. “The idea behind the app is around building empathy, as it can be hard to understand how other people see the world,” he explains.
With an earlier app Signer, Rao used Core ML, Apple’s on-device machine learning framework, to convert sign language gestures into speech — an idea that came to him after reading an article about how frustrating it can be for people in the Deaf community to communicate with people who aren’t fluent in sign language. The app is designed to help facilitate real-time communication in everyday situations where learning sign language may not be immediately possible, such as a quick exchange at a grocery store or placing an order at a local coffee shop.
Rao plans to collaborate with organizations that support Deaf communities to gather more feedback to help refine and improve it. “It’s always really exciting when you receive feedback that lets you make your apps better,” he says. “I want to keep iterating on Signer to make sure it meets the needs of Deaf and hearing communities alike.”
Sofia Sandoval always had a creative spark. Growing up between the U.S. and Mexico, she stayed connected with loved ones by creating elaborate cards for every occasion. But when she went off to college to study computer science at Tecnológico de Monterrey, she found it harder to keep up the ritual and stay in touch. “Everyone gets texts these days,” she explains. “It’s a special feeling to get an actual card, and even the creation process feels intentional, making sure that people feel loved and appreciated.”
Ahead of last year’s Swift Student Challenge submission deadline, while Sandoval was feeling burnt out and a bit homesick, an idea came to her. Cariño, her winning app playground, channels the warmth and thoughtfulness of a physical handmade card into digital form. She designed the app’s card templates in Procreate on iPad using Apple Pencil.
“I wanted to make the user experience feel like writing on a paper card,” Sandoval says. “Using Swift and SwiftUI, I created boundaries for the card and made it so you can flip it over, just like the real thing, and added functions for erasing and exporting the final designs.”
She’s currently experimenting with adding even more dimension to the app through the power of spatial computing. “In my school’s innovation lab, I installed the app on Apple Vision Pro, and it really sparked my curiosity in learning how I can develop and adapt solutions for it,” says Sandoval, who launched Cariño on the App Store earlier this year.
For students looking to take the leap and explore coding for themselves, Sandoval says there’s no time like the present to open Xcode and get started. “I know it can be really overwhelming, but the only way to actually learn is to get fully immersed in it — get uncomfortable,” she advises. “The tools are all literally within reach; you have them all right here.”
This fall, aspiring developers can prepare for the 2026 Swift Student Challenge with new Develop in Swift tutorials that delve into topics like SwiftUI, spatial computing, app design, and machine learning. Students and educators can also sign up to code along with special Meet with Apple sessions on getting started with app development, experimenting with coding intelligence in Xcode, and participating in the Swift Student Challenge.
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