Apple acquires the award-winning design tool Play

Apple has acquired the technology behind a widely praised design tool. A notification to the European Commission has revealed that the company is taking over parts of the studio behind the Play app and hiring some of the team. The app itself has already been removed from the App Store.

Apple has acquired key assets of Rabbit 3 Times, the studio behind the acclaimed design tool Play, and secured the right to hire certain employees. Play was a Mac and iPhone app that allowed designers to create interactive prototypes of iPhone app interfaces using Apple's SwiftUI framework and then directly import them into Xcode —the development environment that Apple recently enhanced with AI agents. This close integration with Apple's own toolkit is likely what made the tool so attractive to the company.

What distinguished Play

Play was aimed at designers who wanted to do more than just create static app interfaces; they wanted to test them directly as functional prototypes. The app used SwiftUI – the very technology developers would later use to build the finished app. Prototypes could be edited across platforms on Mac and iPhone, with both devices remaining synchronized in real time. In 2025, the app received an Apple Design Award in the Innovation category for this approach. Apple described Play as a powerful yet accessible tool with a well-designed, easy-to-navigate interface.

Made famous via Brussels

The acquisition was made public in an unusual way. Apple had already informed the European Commission of the move in February; however, the corresponding announcement was only published this week – after a waiting period of approximately four months. Play has since disappeared from the App Store, which can easily be explained by the acquisition: In such a so-called acqui-hire, Apple is primarily interested in the technology and the team, while the standalone product is discontinued.

What Apple plans to do with the technology

What exactly Apple plans to do with the acquired intellectual property remains unclear. A logical approach would be to incorporate Play's strengths into Xcode and more closely integrate prototyping with the actual development process. However, this hasn't been confirmed – Apple traditionally comments only briefly on such acquisitions. What is clear is that the company is once again bringing on board a small, specialized team whose tools were already based on Apple's own frameworks. (Image: Shutterstock / kyozstorage_stock)