We’re pleased to announce that Swift 3.0 has reached the release candidate stage, this means we have fixed all known issues and implemented all features we intend on having in 3.0, if no critical issues are found in these builds we will do a full release in the near future. The packages can be downloaded from the releases page and a full list of new features can be found in the 3.0 changelog but highlights include the ability to authenticate using certificates, support for the OS X notification center as well as the secure transport mechanism.

We encourage everyone to get the new build and try it out, and tell us about any bugs they should come across as we work towards release candidates and a final release.