Hi everyone,
I’ve been working on migrating my app (SwimTimes, which helps swimmers track their times) to use Core Data + CKSyncEngine with Swift 6.
After many iterations, forum searches, and experimentation, I’ve created a focused sample project that demonstrates the architecture I’m using.
The good news:
👉 I believe the crashes I was experiencing are now solved, and the sync behavior is working correctly.
👉 The demo project compiles and runs cleanly with Swift 6.
However, before adopting this as the final architecture, I’d like to ask the community (and hopefully Apple engineers) to validate a few critical points, especially regarding Swift 6 concurrency and Core Data contexts.
Architecture Overview
Persistence layer: Persistence.swift sets up the Core Data stack with a main viewContext and a background context for CKSyncEngine.
Repositories: All Core Data access is abstracted into repository classes (UsersRepository, SwimTimesRepository), with async/await methods.
SyncEngine: Wraps CKSyncEngine, handles system fields, sync tokens, and bridging between Core Data entities and CloudKit records.
ViewModels: Marked @MainActor, exposing @Published arrays for SwiftUI. They never touch Core Data directly, only via repositories.
UI: Simple SwiftUI views bound to the ViewModels.
Entities:
UserEntity → represents swimmers.
SwimTimeEntity → times linked to a user (1-to-many).
Current Status
The project works and syncs across devices. But there are two open concerns I’d like validated:
Concurrency & Memory Safety
Am I correctly separating viewContext (main/UI) vs. background context (used by CKSyncEngine)?
Could there still be hidden risks of race conditions or memory crashes that I’m not catching?
Swift 6 Sendable Compliance
Currently, I still need @unchecked Sendable in the SyncEngine and repository layers.
What is the recommended way to fully remove these workarounds and make the code safe under Swift 6’s stricter concurrency rules?
Request
Please review this sample project and confirm whether the concurrency model is correct.
Suggest how I can remove the @unchecked Sendable annotations safely.
Any additional code improvements or best practices would also be very welcome — the intention is to share this as a community resource.
I believe once finalized, this could serve as a good reference demo for Core Data + CKSyncEngine + Swift 6, helping others migrate safely.
Environment
iOS 18.5
Xcode 16.4
macOS 15.6
Swift 6
Sample Project
Here is the full sample project on GitHub:
👉 [https://github.com/jarnaez728/coredata-cksyncengine-swift6]
Thanks a lot for your time and for any insights!
Best regards,
Javier Arnáez de Pedro
Selecting any option will automatically load the page