What is the role of access modifiers in controlling access to class members?

Access modifiers in iOS (Swift) control the visibility and access to class members (properties and methods). The main modifiers are private, fileprivate, internal (default), public, and open.

• private restricts access only within the current class or struct.
• fileprivate allows access to all elements within the same file.
• internal permits access within the module (application or framework).
• public and open allow access from other modules, with open enabling inheritance and overriding outside the module.

This helps encapsulate data, protect the internal state of an object, and control which parts of the API are accessible to external code.