Contributing

Thank you for contributing to Meshtastic Apple! Please read this guide before opening a PR.

Prerequisites

• Xcode (latest stable)
• iOS/macOS simulators installed
• SwiftLint (brew install swiftlint)

Run ./scripts/setup-hooks.sh once after cloning to install the pre-commit SwiftLint hook.

Documentation

The app ships a built-in Help & Documentation browser, a Jekyll site on GitHub Pages, and documentation is also published to the main meshtastic.org site.

Resource	Location
Meshtastic.org	meshtastic.org/docs/category/apple-apps
GitHub Pages	meshtastic.github.io/Meshtastic-Apple
In-app	Settings → Help & Documentation
Deep link	meshtastic:///settings/helpDocs

Source markdown lives under docs/user/ and docs/developer/. To rebuild the bundled HTML after editing any markdown:

bash scripts/build-docs.sh --output Meshtastic/Resources/docs

Commit the regenerated files under Meshtastic/Resources/docs/ with your PR.

Branch Naming

Branch from main (trunk-based development). Use descriptive names:

feat/bluetooth-reconnect-improvements
fix/crash-on-ble-disconnect
docs/update-mqtt-guide
chore/update-protobufs

Commit Messages

Use imperative mood subject lines:

Fix crash when BLE device disconnects
Add TAK CoT position relay support
Update protobufs to v2.7

Explain what changed and why in the body. Keep subject lines under 72 characters.

PR Checklist

• All existing tests pass (⌘U in Xcode)
• New tests written for new features and bug fixes
• SwiftLint reports no new errors or warnings
• UI changes include screenshots or a screen recording in the PR description
• Deep link additions are documented in docs/developer/deep-links.md
• SwiftData schema changes include a VersionedSchema and MigrationStage
• ProtobufProtobuf (Protocol Buffers). A method developed by Google for serializing structured data, used in Meshtastic for efficient communication protocol between devices. changes are regenerated with ./scripts/gen_protos.sh and built

Code Style

• Swift only. No Objective-C.
• SwiftUI for all UI. UIKit only where unavoidable.
• SF Symbols for all icons — no embedded image assets for icons.
• OSLog for all logging — no print(). SwiftLint enforces this.
• Indent with tabs.
• Opening braces on the same line.
• // MARK: - to separate logical sections.
• guard for early exit; avoid deeply nested if.

SwiftLint Limits

Check	Warning	Error
Line length	400	—
File length	3500	—
Type body length	400	—
Function body length	200	—
Cyclomatic complexity	60	—
Type name length	60	70

Platform Guards

• Guard iOS-only APIs: #if !targetEnvironment(macCatalyst)
• Guard canImport: #if canImport(UIKit)
• Guard version availability: if #available(iOS 26, *) { ... }

Updating Protobufs

./scripts/gen_protos.sh bumps the protobufs/ submodule and regenerates MeshtasticProtobufs/Sources/ in one step — no separate git submodule update:

./scripts/gen_protos.sh             # pull protobufs origin/master, then regenerate
./scripts/gen_protos.sh develop     # pull a different branch, tag or commit
./scripts/gen_protos.sh --no-pull   # regenerate against the currently pinned protos

Only protoc needs to be installed (brew install protobuf). The script builds protoc-gen-swift itself, from the swift-protobufProtobuf (Protocol Buffers). A method developed by Google for serializing structured data, used in Meshtastic for efficient communication protocol between devices. version pinned in MeshtasticProtobufs/Package.resolved — never generate with a Homebrew protoc-gen-swift. Brew's plugin drifts older than what the project links and silently downgrades every generated file, dropping Sendable, Swift.CaseIterable/allCases and the // swiftlint:disable all header, which removes concurrency conformance and makes SwiftLint lint generated code.

After regenerating:

1. Build and verify tests pass.
2. Mirror any new proto enum cases into the app-side enums that shadow them — FirmwareEditions, RegionCodes, and friends map by raw value, so an unmapped case silently falls back to a default instead of failing to compile.
3. Commit the generated changes together with the submodule pointer update.

Release Process

See RELEASING.md in the repository root for the full release checklist and App Store submission process.