Most used and Success promised libraries for iPhone Apps

Using third-party libraries in your iOS project can save a lot of time and hassle-free work. A team of iOS app developers is connected with iOS app development, consistently innovating in the IT industry.

Libraries are becoming more varied and are growing in number quickly. Here, we listed the top libraries that you can use to bootstrap your next iOS project, which will make your codebase more robust, more performant and will enable you to deliver iOS projects more quickly. Based on the iPhone app development experience, today, we are listing here the most popular and most frequently used iOS libraries. 

Top 21 most used libraries in iOS app development

Here are 21 libraries that we use in normal iOS app development and also every iOS developer must know about these libraries.

1. UIKit:

   UIKit manages the app interactions with the system and provides classes to manage the app’s data and resources. This UIKit is a lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces.

2. AVFoundation:

   AVFoundation is the feature-rich framework for working with time-based audiovisual media on iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS. Using AVFoundation, it is so easy and quickly plays, build, edit QuickTime movies, MPEG-4 files, play HLS streams and create powerful media functionality into your apps.

3. Alamofire:

   Several libraries exist to streamline server communication, offering alternatives to iOS’s built-in URLSession class. iOS developers associate Alamofire with HTTP networking on iOS, making it their immediate choice when considering HTTP networking solutions. This is a client-server connection method written in Swift language which supports sending async URL and get the corresponding response. Even this includes some other components like Alamofire Network Activity Indicator or Alamofire Image.

4. AFnetworking:

   AFNetworking is a lightweight and fast networking library that uses blocks and GCD(Grand Central Dispatch).

5. CallKit:

   The CallKit library improves the VoIP experience by allowing apps to integrate with the native phone UI. By integrating CallKit in the iPhone app will be able to:

   • Use the native incoming call screen in both the locked and unlocked states. 
   • Start calls from the native iPhone app’s Contacts, favourites and Recents screens.
   • Interplay with other calls in the system. 

6. Contacts:

   The Contacts library enables access to the user’s contacts, formats, and localizes contact information. This contact framework integration is available on all Apple platforms and replaces the Address Book in iOS and macOS. Most of the apps read contact information without making any changes. This framework optimizes for thread-safe and read-only usage.

7. Core DataBase:

   Core data is a data modelling framework built on the model-view-controller pattern, which will be in terms of entities and relationships. Integrating Core DataBase simplifies application development by reducing underlying code, facilitating easy implementation.

8. Core Audio:

   Core Audio serves as the digital audio infrastructure of iOS, comprising software frameworks designed to manage audio requirements in applications. Core Audio integration will help for high-performance and low latency.

9. Core Location:

   Core Location library provides information about geographical location and position relative to a nearby iBeacon device. Core Location library integration helps to gather data using all available components on the device, including Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, Magnetometer, barometer and cellular hardware.

10. Core Telephone:

    Core telephone library framework helps to obtain information about a user’s home cellular service provider. Core Telephone integration helps to collect information about current mobile calls. A CTCall object gives you information about an existing call, including a unique identifier and state information such as dialling, incoming, connected or disconnected.

11. MapKit:

    The MapKit Framework embeds the map directly into your windows and views. Even you can add annotations and overlays to the map to call points of interest or user destinations.

12. MediaPlayer:

    Developers utilize the media player, a component of MusicKit, to control playback of the user’s media from their app. If your app incorporates music, you can use this framework to search for audio content in the user’s library. To play content from the users’ library using the Media Player framework using one of the built-in MPMusicPalyerController objects:

    • An app player plays music locally within your app. Use this player when you want great control over the audio you play for the user. 
    • The system player operates the Music app to play audio on your behalf. Use this player when you want audio to continue playing even when the user switches away from your app. 

13. MobileCoreServices:

    Utilize uniform type identifier information to construct and manage data transfer between your app and other app services.

14. UserNotifications:

    Send push notifications to users’ devices from a server or generate them locally from your app to communicate important information, even while the app runs on the user’s device.

15. WebKit:

    Showcase web content in Windows which implement browser features such as following user-activated links, managing a back-forward list and also the history of recently visited pages.

16. SwiftyJSON:

    SwiftyJSON is meant to handle JSON in Swift. Parsing JSON with Swift can be tricky because of typecasting issues that make it challenging to deserialise the model object, and it may need a bunch of nested if statements. SwiftyJSON makes all of it quite easy to do. It is also the second most popular Swift library.

17. SDWebImage:

    SDWebImage focuses on image downloading, caching and offers an extensive list of features:

    • A UIImageView category adds web image and cache management to the cocoa Touch framework. 
    • An asynchronous image downloader
    • An asynchronous memory and also disk image is caching with automatic cache expiration handling.
    • Animated GIF support
    • Background image decompression
    • Make sure that same URL won’t be downloaded several times
    • Make sure that bogus URLs won’t be retired again and again
    • Make sure that the main thread will never be blocked

18. Firebase:

    Creating a client-server application involves managing two aspects: front-end and back-end development. Writing a backend code by the mobile app developers is a daunting task which is also a waste of time and productivity. To overcome this, firebase is the best choice for iPhone app developers. It not only supports a lot of backend side features but also manipulating the real-time database and saves the server cost. Here are some things that you can achieve with Firebase backend:

    • User authentication
    • Database management
    • Storing large files with Firebase Storage
    • Push Notifications with Firebase messaging
    • Monetisation through advertising 
    • Analytics and crash reports. All these features can be implemented without writing any backend code.

19. PubNub:

    PubNub uses the publish or subscribe model for the real-time data streaming and device signalling which lets you enact and manage persistent socket connections to any device and push data to a global audience in less than ¼ of a second.

20. Google maps:

    With the Maps SDK integration for iOS, you can add maps based on the Google maps data to your application. The SDK automatically handles to the Google Maps servers, map display and response to user gestures such as clicks and drags.

21. Google places API:

    The Google place API in the iOS application enables you to develop location-aware apps that acknowledge contextually to the local businesses and other places near the device. To identify a place you must represent using GMSPlace Class Reference which includes the name, place, geographical location, Phone number, Place ID and address.

Conclusion

 To conclude, the above top 21 libraries are the most used libraries in all the Xcode projects. These iOS libraries will assist you from frontend to backend as well as for special effects and UI animations. 

Krify is the leading iPhone app development company in India and UK having well-experienced and skilled iOS app developers who work under pressure to provide the iOS app with the client expectation. For more details, reach us today.