Swift Concurrency Manifesto
type: NewsArticle
description: The Swift Concurrency Manifesto, authored by Chris Lattner, outlines a long-term vision for introducing a first-class concurrency model to Swift, focusing on task-based abstractions like async/await and actors to eliminate shared mutable state. The document emphasizes improving programmer experience by making concurrent code safer, easier to design, and more maintainable, while noting that it is not a finalized proposal but a catalyst for community discussion. Swift has historically avoided built-in concurrency, relying on OS abstractions like GCD, but the manifesto aims to address issues such as race conditions and unclear data protection in current patterns.
date published: 2017-08-11T01:35:38+00:00
date modified: 2026-05-23T07:36:09+00:00
language: en
is accessible for free: true
article body: # Swift Concurrency Manifesto Author: [Chris Lattner](https://github.com/lattner) [Chinese Translation](https://gist.github.com/yxztj/7744e97eaf8031d673338027d89eea76) by [Jason Yu](https://github.com/yxztj) ## Contents - [Introduction](#introduction) - [Overall Vision](#overall-vision) - [Part 1: Async/await: Beautiful asynchronous APIs](#part-1-asyncawait-beautiful-asynchronous-apis) - [Part 2: Actors: Eliminating shared mutable state](#part-2-actors-eliminating-shared-mutable-state) - [Part 3: Reliability through fault isolation](#part-3-reliability-through-fault-isolation) - [Part 4: Improving system architecture](#part-4-improving-system-architecture) - [Part 5: The crazy and brilliant future](#part-5-the-crazy-and-brilliant-future) - [Learning from other concurrency designs](#learning-from-other-concurrency-designs) ## Introduction This document is published in the style of a "Swift evolution manifesto", outlining a long-term view of how to tackle a very large problem. It explores *one possible* approach to adding a first-class concurrency model to Swift, in an effort to catalyze positive discussion that leads us to a best-possible design. As such, it isn't an approved or finalized design prescriptive of what Swift will end up adopting. It is the job of public debate on the open source [swift-evolution mailing list](https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution) to discuss and iterate towards that ultimate answer, and we may end up with a completely different approach. We focus on task-based concurrency abstractions commonly encountered in client and server applications, particularly those that are highly event driven (e.g. responding to UI events or requests from clients). This does not attempt to be a comprehensive survey of all possible options, nor does it attempt to solve all possible problems in the space of concurrency. Instead, it outlines a single coherent design thread that can be built over the span of years to incrementally drive Swift to further greatn…
publisher: Web Pulse
keywords: developer-tools, open-source
mentions: Chris Lattner
mentions: Jason Yu
mentions: Swift
citation: CreativeWork