iOS needs no introduction as there would be hardly anyone on the Earth who will ask for it. Such is the popularity of Apple.
With millions of iOS devices, iPhones, iPads, and iPods, and millions of apps running on them, the field of iOS app development is plush and full of countless possibilities. To develop a classy and innovative iOS app that can run on the high-end iOS platform requires an equally good set of tools. So, in this post, we’ve curated a list of the best tools to take your iOS development to the next level.
Text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) are applications for writing code. These applications are the primary user interface for developers to create their own programs.
XCode: - XCode is an official IDE for Swift made by Apple. It is designed for a range of products like iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV because it has countless plugins, through which you can customize as you want.
Code Runner: - It holds the ability to run any language and not just Swift. It is very feasible, and you can try its demo version first before buying. Also, it comes with a large number of code templates you can pick from.
Although the two star-languages are Swift and Objective-C, below are the two best sites where you can get some of the best tutorials regarding iOS app development.
Swiftlang: – Focused on the primary language for iOS programming, here you can get everything you want to know about Swift.
Stanford: – Free and made by Stanford, it is the best you can get. It is a quality tutorial site with in-depth videos such that you won’t require any other than this.
Since research is crucial in app development, you must pick the best. We have listed up the two best resources that alone can give you access to thousands of libraries.
SwiftToolbox: – You will be amazed to see an absolutely enormous collection of iOS and OS X libraries in it. With handy search and browse functions and a maintained community, SwiftToolbox is undoubtedly great.
CocoaPods: – Known as the dependency managers for Swift and Objective-C programming, it comes with eighteen thousand libraries. Any doubt why it is an essential tool?
Since there are numerous plugins available. If we start writing about each one of them, the list won’t end ever. So, we’ve listed only the best ones.
But if you don’t find them suitable for your specific requirements, don’t stop looking as you remember - the sky is the limit for plugins.
Alcatraz: – It is an open-source plugin and package manager. It comes with its own discovery engine for plugins, templates, and color schemes.
CocoaPods: – This plugin simplifies the use of CocoaPods from within XCode.
Just reading some stuff won’t help many developers. They get the satisfaction of learning when they see it for real. For those, there is quite a good amount of Youtube tutorial series for coding in Swift. Following are the few best ones.
A Casual Programmer: – Up-to-date and brilliantly presented videos, Casual Programmer comes with three playlists - Objective-C development, iOS App, and iOS game programming. It is apt for beginners as it can give them a good start and provide all the content they want before starting with programming.
Ben Johnson: – The reason this one tops the list is that it starts from the basics. Then it moves to the templates and finally to Xcode. It tends to concentrate more on the performance of the tools than the usage of the “build-an-app” style.
What is the use of developing things and keeping them to yourself if others won’t come to know? Advertising what you have developed is crucial. Only then, the users will fall for your app. But, you should also know where and how to promote it. Here are the top ad networks in the world, according to us.
Facebook: – You might not need any justification for why we mentioned Facebook, right? Being the leader in mobile advertising across all platforms, Facebook covers all media formats. And hence it must be on top of your list for marketing campaigns.
Chartboost: – This gaming-focused platform should be the next on the list for marketing your app. It provides highly targeted ads for a retention rate of 60% higher than the average of the other networks. It covers video, animated, GIF, and interstitial ads too.
These are a few resources that didn’t really fit in any of the categories above. But they are still worth mentioning due to their importance and ability.
NSHipster: – A “journal of the overlooked bits in Objective-C, Swift, and Cocoa. It is constantly updated. Hence you can definitely find some nuggets in there!
Cocoa Manifest: – Jonathan Penn stopped writing up his observations and guidelines for Swift in 2014 because he was hired by Apple. So he knew what he was talking about. It is a great, down-to-earth resource.
We know that there is a long list of tools we haven’t mentioned here. But, have tried to highlight the best among each category. We hope you might have found what you were searching for in this guide. Feel free to share which one you think is an essential tool apart from the list above.
I love to make a difference. Thus, I started Acquaint Softtech with the vision of making developers easily accessible and affordable to all. Me and my beloved team have been fulfilling this vision for over 15 years now and will continue to get even bigger and better.
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