If you love open-source tools and want a lightweight, privacy-friendly setup for coding in Swift, then pairing VSCodium with Continue AI is a perfect combo. This setup gives you an AI-assisted, Apple-friendly development environment without relying on proprietary IDEs or cloud services.
VSCodium is the open-source build of Visual Studio Code — minus Microsoft’s telemetry and licensing restrictions. It’s ideal if you value:
- 🕵️♂️ Privacy (no data sent to Microsoft)
- 🧠 Full control over extensions
- 🪶 Lightweight performance
- 🧑💻 Freedom to customize your dev setup
VSCodium uses the same extensions and themes as VS Code, so you can easily add Swift support and AI integration.
Setting Up Swift and VSCodium
// Install Swift
brew install swift
// Install Swift's official language server, SourceKit-LSP
// this powers syntax highlighting, autocompletion and refactoring
brew install sourcekit-lsp
// ... last but not least VSCodium the open source VSCode
brew installl VSCodiumThen, in VSCodium:
- Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X).
- Search for Swift.
- Install the Swift Language extension (by Khoa Pham or Swift Server Work Group).
Now you should have:
- Syntax highlighting
- Autocomplete suggestions
- Code navigation and diagnostics
Adding Continue AI
Now, let’s supercharge Swift development with AI assistance — using Continue, the open-source alternative to GitHub Copilot.
It integrates seamlessly with VSCodium or VS Code and helps with:
- AI code completion
- Inline explanations
- Code generation
- Chat-based assistance
Installation Steps
- Open VSCodium.
- Go to the Extensions view.
- Search for Continue.
- Install the Continue – AI Copilot extension.
Once installed, a sidebar icon (∞) will appear — that’s your Continue AI panel.
