The deal surfaced through a European Commission filing published after the mandatory waiting period under the Digital Markets Act.
Play won the 2025 Apple Design Award for Innovation
Photo Credit: Apple
Apple has reportedly acquired key assets of Rabbit 3 Times, the company behind the Play app that won the Innovation category at the 2025 Apple Design Awards. The agreement also gives Apple the option to hire some of the company's employees. Details of the deal have emerged through a recent European regulatory disclosure, while the Play app has already disappeared from the App Store. Apple has not disclosed how it intends to use the acquired assets.
A MacRumors spotted a transaction in a filing published by the European Commission this week. Apple notified the regulator in February that it would acquire certain assets from Rabbit 3 Times and secure the right to recruit selected employees. The disclosure became public after the four-month waiting period required under the European Union's Digital Markets Act.
Play was available on Mac and iPhone, helping developers and designers build interactive app prototypes using Apple's SwiftUI framework. It also allowed projects to be transferred to Xcode for further development.
In 2025, Play won the Innovation category at the Apple Design Awards. Apple recognised the software for helping developers create interactive SwiftUI prototypes while supporting collaboration between Mac and iPhone through real-time synchronisation.
Following the acquisition, Play is no longer available for download from the App Store. Rabbit 3 Times had previously announced that support for its Mac and iPhone apps would end on April 20, 2026. Before discontinuing its services, the company also made its Play to Xcode export feature free to ease the transition for existing users. Its website was later taken offline after announcing that it was working on a new project.
The report says Apple has not revealed its plans for the acquired technology. However, the intellectual property could eventually be incorporated into Xcode or other developer tools.
Notably, Rabbit 3 Times was founded in 2021 and developed software to design, prototype, and generate SwiftUI code in real time for iOS and macOS applications.
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