The rapid growth in the popularity of Apple's iPhone has resulted in an unprecedented demand for top-notch iOS apps. With millions of iPhone users worldwide, the need for innovative, user-friendly, and bug-free apps has never been greater.

Based on the above context, iOS app development has the potential to unlock significant business value by targeting the right audience and maximizing ROI. 

But do you know you need appropriate tools to build a reliable iOS app that will exceed your expectations? From ideation to deployment, the right tools can streamline the app development process, enhance app performance, and ensure a smooth user experience.

In this blog, we have created a list of the best iOS app development tools that will help you build highly-scalable mobile apps.

So, let’s move forward!

Best iOS App Development Tools



Design Tools

Figma

Figma is a freemium cloud-based interface design tool used by web and app designers. It allows them to create and collaborate on design projects in real-time with a team, without the need for additional software.

Additionally, its pricing varies according to the specific needs of a project. Talking about its features, Figma includes vector networks, design components, prototyping, and design handoff.

Overall, with its intuitive interface, powerful features, and seamless collaboration capabilities, it has become a go-to tool for many designers, startups, and large enterprises alike.

Flawless

Flawless is a cutting-edge comparison tool that revolutionizes the way designers and developers work together to bring designs to life. This powerful tool integrates seamlessly into your iOS simulator. And provides a real-time comparison between your expected designs and their actual implementation.

Also, it supports a wide range of design formats including Sketch and others. 

Sketch 

Sketch is a popular digital design tool that is widely used for designing user interfaces and other visual assets for iOS and other platforms. It has a vector-based design environment that allows designers to create scalable graphics that can be resized without losing quality. This makes it an ideal tool for designing interfaces for iOS apps, which need to look sharp on a wide range of devices and screen sizes.

Invision

Lastly, Invision is also a product design platform that provides a range of tools and services for designing, prototyping, and testing user experiences for iOS and other platforms.

It allows designers to create interactive prototypes and animations of their designs, which can be tested and validated with real users before development begins.

Also Read: What to watch for in iOS development in 2023. 

Editors & IDE (Integrated Development Environment) 

Xcode

Xcode is an IDE used for macOS and iOS app development. It includes a suite of tools for developing software, including 

  • An integrated development environment (IDE)
  • A code editor 
  • A debugger, and
  • Other essential tools

It also supports multiple programming languages, including Swift, Objective-C, C, C++, and more. This makes it a versatile tool for developers of all skill levels.

With this tool, developers can create, test, and submit apps to the App Store for distribution to millions of Apple users worldwide.

AppCode

AppCode is a commercial IDE for Swift and Objective-C programming languages, specifically for iOS and macOS software development. It is developed by JetBrains and provides a wide range of features including:

  • Code highlighting 
  • Smart code completion
  • Refactoring
  • Debugging, and many more. 

Programming Languages 

Objective-C

Objective-C is a high-level, object-oriented programming language that was widely used for iOS app development services. It is known for its dynamic binding, which allows developers to change the behavior of objects at runtime.

It also supports features such as inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism, which are important concepts in object-oriented programming.

Swift

Swift is a powerful and intuitive programming language developed by Apple for developing applications for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. One of the key advantages of Swift is its safety features, which help developers avoid common programming errors and reduce the likelihood of crashes and security vulnerabilities. 

For example, Swift automatically handles memory management and eliminates the need for manual memory management, which can lead to dangerous bugs in Objective-C.

For Game Development

Unity

Unity is a cross-platform 2D & 3D game engine used to create games, virtual reality experiences, and other interactive applications. It was released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a macOS X game engine. Over the years, it has undergone significant transformations and expansion. 

Some key features of Unity include 

  • As mentioned earlier it provides support for both 2D and 3D graphics. This gives you the freedom to choose the art style according to your needs. Furthermore, each graphic comes with its own set of specialized tools such as sprite sheet cutting for 2D graphics and post-processing effects, and shader graph for 3D graphics.
  • It offers a transparent and easy-to-understand architecture. 
  • It comes with a powerful scripting API that offers quick access to commonly used features. 
  • Lastly, it offers cross-platform app development support as well. This means developers can export games for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and more. 

Buildbox

Buildbox is a drag-and-drop game engine used to create 2D mobile games without the need for coding, programming, or scripting. It is designed to make game development accessible to non-programmers, hobbyists, and indie developers. 

It allows the creation of games by placing assets and elements on a canvas, defining rules and behaviours for those elements, and previewing their game in real time. 

Buildbox also provides a library of pre-made assets and templates to help users get started quickly and easily.

For Testing

EarlGrey

EarlGrey is an end-to-end UI testing framework for iOS applications, developed by Google. It helps to write tests that are easy to understand and maintain. With its powerful and flexible feature set, EarlGrey is a popular choice among mobile app developers who want a fast and reliable way to test their apps.

Key features of EarlGrey

  • It is a completely open-source framework. 
  • Its test actions are performed only on UI elements. 
  • EarlGrey provides a high level of synchronization with the UI and network requests. 

Detox

Detox is also an end-to-end testing framework for mobile applications, specifically for React Native and Native iOS apps. From UI to the network and data layers, it covers the entire spectrum of functionality. And provides a way for developers to test their apps on real devices or simulators.

Furthermore, it uses a declarative syntax to describe tests, making it easy to write and understand tests. 

Its only disadvantage is that it does not support testing on real devices for iOS platforms, but does so in the case of Android app development. 

XCTest and XCUITest

XCTest and XCUITest are testing frameworks provided by Apple for writing and executing tests for iOS and macOS applications.

Both XCTest and XCUITest are integrated into the Xcode development environment and can be run from within Xcode or from the command line using the xcodebuild tool.



Backend Services



Firebase

Firebase is a BaaS: backend as a service for web, Android, and iOS applications. It provides developers with a powerful back-end infrastructure that is easy to set up and manage, without the need for server-side coding. 

The platform also offers robust authentication features, including support for email/password authentication, as well as third-party providers like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. In addition, Firebase provides scalable cloud storage for storing and serving large files, as well as static website hosting.



CloudKit

CloudKit is a framework developed by Apple that enables developers to build and store their apps' data in the cloud. It provides an easy-to-use API for storing, retrieving, and querying data, as well as notifying clients when data changes.

It is specifically designed for use with Apple's platforms, including iOS, macOS, and the web. It integrates seamlessly with other Apple technologies, such as iCloud and iMessage. This makes it a convenient and powerful choice for developers who want to store their app's data in the cloud.

Back4App

Back4App has been a trailblazer in the realm of iOS backend development since 2015. It is a powerful and intuitive platform that offers a wealth of resources to streamline the process of data storage and retrieval. Additionally, Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to perform even the most complex queries with the right tools. 



Plugins



CocoaPods

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. This plugin is quite popular among iOS app developers worldwide. Because it allows them to easily manage the libraries and dependencies used in their projects. 

Additionally, it provides a centralized repository for libraries. This helps to reduce development time and improve the quality of projects, as developers can take advantage of existing libraries rather than having to build everything from scratch.



Dash

Dash is an API documentation browser and code snippet manager used for iOS app development services. It provides quick and offline access to over 200 API documentation sets for various programming languages and technologies, including Swift, Objective-C, Python, Ruby, and more.

With this plugin, developers can quickly search for code snippets as well as access detailed API documentation for the libraries and frameworks they use. This makes it easier for them to find the information without having to switch between multiple tabs or search engines.



Injection For Xcode

Injection for Xcode is a code injection tool for Objective-C and Swift projects that run on the iOS platform. It allows developers to modify the running app without having to restart the app, which saves time and streamlines the development process.

It is designed to be simple and easy to use, with a straightforward and intuitive interface. Also, This tool integrates seamlessly with Xcode and is compatible with both Objective-C and Swift projects.



Libraries 



RxSwift

RxSwift is a reactive programming library for iOS, macOS, and watchOS. It is built on the principles of reactive programming, which is a programming paradigm that emphasizes the use of reactive data streams to handle events and data changes.

Basically, It provides a way for developers to handle asynchronous events and data streams in a simple, intuitive, and organized manner.



The Foundation Framework

The Foundation framework is the official library from Apple’s developer documentation. It includes classes for managing data, such as strings, arrays, dictionaries, and sets. 

One of the key benefits of the Foundation framework is its compatibility with both iOS and macOS, which makes it easy to share code between the two platforms. The framework is also designed to be fast, efficient, and scalable, with a rich set of APIs and features that can be used to build a wide range of apps and services.



Nimble

Nimble is a Swift-based testing library designed to make testing easier, faster, and more enjoyable in iOS development. It is used in conjunction with XCTest, the default testing framework for iOS and macOS, to provide a more concise and expressive syntax for writing tests.

Kingfisher

Kingfisher is a popular open-source library for downloading and caching images in iOS app development. It provides a simple and efficient way to download and cache images asynchronously. Want to know how? 

Developers can use the API that can be used to retrieve images from a URL, and it automatically caches the images on disk and in memory for quick retrieval later. This makes it an ideal tool for working with images in iOS apps, as it eliminates the need to write complex code to handle image downloads and caching.

For Security Considerations



Frida

Frida is an open-source dynamic instrumentation toolkit that is used to perform dynamic analysis and instrumentation of applications, including iOS apps. It is often used for reverse engineering, security testing, and other forms of dynamic analysis.

With Frida, developers can inject code into running applications, monitor and modify application behavior, and extract data from applications in real time. This allows developers to understand how applications behave and identify potential security vulnerabilities or other issues.



Ghidra

GHIDRA is a free, open-source software reverse engineering framework developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). It is written in Java and runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. 

Ghidra provides a wide range of features for reverse engineering and binary analysis, including disassembly, decompilation, debugging, and scripting capabilities.

Objection

Objection is a runtime mobile exploration toolkit, powered by Frida, that allows developers and security researchers to interact with iOS apps at runtime. It is often used for security testing, reverse engineering, and other forms of dynamic analysis.

Furthermore, it can be used for a wide range of tasks including

  • Dumping keychain data
  • Bypassing jailbreak detection
  • Hooking method calls
  • Accessing private APIs

Overall, Objection is a powerful tool that can be used to improve the security and performance of iOS apps. 



Wrapping Up!

Whether you are just starting out as an iOS developer or have years of experience under your belt, the tools on this list are guaranteed to have something for you. From powerful code injection tools to streamlined development environments, these resources are essential for any iOS developer looking to improve their productivity. 

Also, if you still have any queries regarding these tools or you want to start a new app development project, then you can get in touch with us. 

As a reputable and reliable iOS app development company, DianApps offers exceptional solutions and services to meet all your development needs. Whether you are looking to build a new app from scratch or improve an existing one, we have the expertise and resources to help you achieve your goals.

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