Every "local multiplayer" tutorial you'll find assumes two devices on the same Wi-Fi network, then walks you through Bonjour service discovery. That's the easy 80%. The part nobody covers is what happens when there's no Wi-Fi at all — two phones, a restaurant with no guest network, both parties expecting the app to just work. That gap is where MultipeerConnectivity actually earns its keep, and it's the backbone of every phone-to-phone experience I've shipped.
Why MultipeerConnectivity over a backend
For a two-person local game or icebreaker app, a server buys you nothing. It adds latency, a cost line item, an account system nobody wants to sign up for, and a single point of failure for a feature that's fundamentally "two people in the same room." MultipeerConnectivity uses Bluetooth and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi automatically, falling back between them without you writing that logic yourself. No network required, no accounts, no server bill.
The three objects you actually need
import MultipeerConnectivity
