Not the kind you fix with a pill — the other kind. The one that feels like too many tabs open in your brain. Slack notifications, bills, algorithms, everything blinking for attention like a slot machine.

So one night, I did something radical.

I closed the laptop. Walked outside. And for the first time in months, I looked up.

The sky hit me like a quiet wave.

The air was cold enough to sting, the grass damp under my socks (because of course I forgot my shoes). Somewhere a neighbor’s dog barked, then stopped. Silence stretched out — the kind that doesn’t demand anything from you.

And then there they were.

Hundreds of tiny lights just… doing their thing. No updates. No drama. No push notifications from Orion’s Belt. Just existing.

I stood there like an idiot, staring, trying to remember when I’d stopped doing this.

Maybe around the same time I started believing “being productive” meant being available 24/7.

That night I didn’t find enlightenment or hear the voice of the universe or any of that stuff.

I just felt something unclench.

It was small — like someone opened a window in a room that had been sealed for years.

The funny thing about the stars? They don’t care if you’re winning.

They don’t care about your follower count, your unread emails, or your perfectly curated “digital wellness routine.”

They just keep shining, even when you forget to look.

Since that night, I’ve started going out more often.

Sometimes with a cup of tea, sometimes with a beer, sometimes just with my thoughts (which, let’s be honest, are often worse than either of the first two).

There’s something grounding about watching the same sky our ancestors did — before phones, before electricity, before time felt like a limited-edition product.

It makes you realize that most of what we call urgent probably isn’t.

A small, practical tip — not from an astronomer, but from someone who’s tired:

When your brain starts spinning at 2 a.m., don’t scroll. Step outside instead.

Even if you can’t see many stars because you live in the city — look for one. Just one.

There’s always at least one.

The act of looking up pulls you out of your own head.

It’s impossible to doomscroll and stargaze at the same time.

That’s the universe’s quiet little UX feature.

Sometimes, when I’m outside late, I imagine all the other people doing the same thing — someone in New York with a fire escape view, someone in Tokyo taking a smoke break, someone in a field somewhere chasing their next astrophotography shot.

Different lives, same sky.

It’s a weird kind of comfort, knowing you’ll never run out of sky.

And maybe that’s the point.

The stars don’t fix anything. They don’t erase your problems or reply to your messages.

But they remind you that your problems are temporary — that you’re small, yes, but also part of something impossibly huge and weird and beautiful.

By the time I go back inside, the headache is gone.

Not because I solved anything.

Just because I remembered how to be quiet again.

And in a world where everything screams for attention, that feels a little bit like sanity.

How Stargazing Saved My Sanity (and Why I Keep Looking Up) was originally published in ✨ Under the Same Sky by Astro Photons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like many indie developers, I often find myself scratching my own itch. In this case, it was something as simple as converting units. Whether it was calculating focal length for astrophotography, checking fuel consumption in different formats, or just figuring out how many cups fit in a liter when cooking, I always ended up on clunky, ad-heavy converter sites.

The experience was slow, distracting, and, honestly, annoying. A task that should take two seconds often felt like navigating a maze of popups. That’s when I decided to build something better.

The Idea

I wanted a tool that would be:
• Fast — load instantly on any device.
• Accurate — formulas that I can trust.
• Clean — no clutter, no distractions, no dark UX patterns.
• Free — because conversions are such a basic need, they should be accessible to everyone.

And that’s how UnitToolbox — Universal Unit Converter was born.

Building the Tool

From a technical side, I knew I wanted the project to be lightweight and scalable. I chose Eleventy as the static site generator. Every converter page is generated at build time, which means pages are extremely fast and SEO-friendly.

For hosting, I went with Netlify. The deployment process is simple, costs are low, and I get great performance out of the box. To keep things efficient, I worked in VS Code instead of my usual Xcode setup for iOS apps — and I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth it was.

The result? A platform that can easily grow to hundreds of converters across multiple categories, without slowing down or becoming unmanageable.

Who It’s For

Right now UnitToolbox covers the essentials — length, weight, temperature, area, and volume. But I’ve also started adding niche converters: astronomy tools, photography calculations, and engineering formulas.

That means the tool can help:
• 👩🎓 Students working on math or science homework.
• 🛠 Engineers and devs who need quick reference.
• 🍳 Home cooks and DIYers who just need fast answers.
• 🌌 Astro geeks like me who want accurate astronomy calculations.

What’s Next

My roadmap includes adding more categories (IT, health & fitness, automotive) and eventually offering translations for international users. I also plan to release an iOS app with quick-access widgets.

But above all, my goal stays the same: make conversions fast, accurate, and accessible to everyone.

Thanks for reading my story 🙌 If you’ve ever been frustrated with messy conversion websites, I’d love for you to give UnitToolbox a try. And if you have ideas for converters that would make your life easier, let me know — I’m building this project in public and user feedback is the best way forward.

The Story of My Business

In 2013, I released my first iPhone app on the App Store as an indie iOS developer — Force Saber of Light, a simple lightsaber simulator. Since then, I’ve made a living solely from my iOS app portfolio, which I’ve built and expanded over the past 11 years. It might sound simple, but trust me, it wasn’t.

Today, I’m a fully independent iOS developer, but back in 2013, when I first started learning Objective-C (yep, back then there was no fancy Swift, and the whole iOS development process was done in this weird C-based hybrid), I didn’t even own a Mac.

To be honest, developing iPhone apps wasn’t even my first choice.

It all started around 2009, when I was 20 years old and still attending IT technical school in Poland. One of my classmates had just gotten the first Android phone available in our country — the HTC Dream, which was known in Poland as the Era G1 (still not sure which name sounds more marketable).

We browsed through the Android Market (that’s what Google Play was called back then) to see what kind of fun stuff we could install on this gadget. The market was full of soundboards, glitchy games (there was no Google review process for apps — anyone could release an APK with just one click, and it was instantly available worldwide), and a bunch of boring finance apps that didn’t exactly scream “20-year-old fun.”

Then, while scrolling, something caught my eye — a lightsaber icon. As a Star Wars fan, I had to check it out. We downloaded an app called Android Lightsaber.

We launched it. The app wasn’t visually impressive-even by the standards of those days.

But then, I moved the phone — and magic happened.

The phone made a sound. The iconic sound of a lightsaber swing. But here’s the twist-it wasn’t triggered by pressing a button on the screen; the sound played when you waved the phone in the air, as if you were actually holding a lightsaber.

As 20-year-olds in Poland, we didn’t have gyroscope-enabled phones (we probably didn’t even know what a gyroscope was back then). This was something entirely new, something we weren’t prepared for. The whole class took turns waving that phone around, even the teacher got in on it. And that’s when a spark ignited in my mind — this app could be so much better.

I can’t remember exactly what the app looked like visually, but I remember all the things I would’ve added or done differently — if only I knew how to code.

But, as much as it sounds like a beautiful, dreamlike story, I didn’t start coding right away. I had to finish school, prepare for my final exams, and get into my dream university-Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

Long story short, I did all those “life” things. But during my first year of university in 2010, instead of studying for exams, I was learning how to program Android apps.

I hadn’t learned Java before, but that didn’t discourage me. Once you know one object-oriented language, picking up another is easier — and I already had some experience with C++ and Pascal from school. So, I bought an Android programming book and started working through the tutorials.

I even had a moment of doubt about my career path and went to an interview for an Android programming internship at a corporation, but fortunately, they didn’t call me back — thank goodness for that!

Progress was slow, though. The book I bought wasn’t a step-by-step guide, but more of a bible about the entire Android framework. Great for an experienced developer, but not ideal for a total newbie like me.

I soon realized that even something as simple as a lightsaber app was beyond my abilities at that time. So, I began thinking about what kind of app I could realistically create.

How Did I Come Up With the Idea for My First App?

Like all the best ideas, it came to me by chance.

It was typical student life — we were hanging out at a pub, drinking beers with friends. After a few rounds, we ran out of creative reasons for what to toast next.

“We’ve got a problem. An app would totally solve this!”

And that’s how I came up with the idea for my first app. It was a simple app with just one button in the center of the screen. Press it, and a randomly selected toast from a pre-set list would appear, giving us a reason to raise our glasses. Not the most original idea, but it was practical-a real “Make a Toast!” app. (It’s no longer available.)

Why not the lightsaber app? As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know how to code something like that yet.

It would have required using local storage (like today’s iOS UserDefaults), local variables within an Activity (the iOS equivalent of a ViewController), sound playback, and navigating between views.

At that time, the only thing I could do was display a single view. So instead, I decided to create a much simpler app based on an online tutorial, just to finish something, release it, have it in my portfolio, and gain experience in publishing apps. It was my way of breaking the ice.

“Make a Toast!” wasn’t a good app. It was literally just a screen with a button, and when you pressed it, an Android toast notification appeared with a random toast. Not great. But the main goal was to publish something and gain experience in the entire process — from idea to publication.

So, I quickly uploaded the app to the Android Market and… disappointment.

Over three days, it made $0.20 from AdMob ads. Total. That wasn’t what I had in mind.

But I didn’t give up. I sat down and coded two more apps — ”Top 10 Movie Quotes Soundboard” (soundboards were hot back then) and “Buttons” (another soundboard, but this time with popular Polish memes).

Through these projects, I learned how to play sounds and navigate between views in Android, which took me further. Things got a bit better — earning $0.40-$0.50 a day from display ads wasn’t as much of a problem anymore. But I was still far from having a real, stable, and most importantly, profitable business.

Let’s be honest — my first three apps were just bad.

Instead of coding more junk, I decided to create something that had been missing from the Android Market for months — something I’d been thinking about since my school days. A proper lightsaber app.

The best one at that time was still the Android Lightsaber, the same one I’d played with in school two years earlier. By that point, it had over a million downloads. There was a clear demand for such an app, so I thought, why not go for it?

Here’s a little business tip: if your idea for an app already exists in the form of a competing app in the App Store, that’s great! It means there are people who want that functionality. Now just make a better version.

The whole development process took five days out of my life. I was coding from dawn to late at night, and on the fifth day, just before going to bed, I uploaded the app to the Market. Full of anxiety, excitement, and hope all at once, I went to sleep, ready to check AdMob in the morning…

… and saw $5.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was expecting. I was sort of satisfied, but I still felt something was missing…

…until the next day, when I saw an additional $8 in my account, followed by another $14 the day after that.

By February 2011, I had earned $1,080.07 from ads in my Android apps. This was 2011, I was a student in Poland at a public university (where education is free), and after paying taxes, this was enough for me to live on! And since then, I’ve been living off it.

But hey, I was supposed to talk about building an iPhone app business!

Switching from Android Developer to iOS Developer

My business started generating regular income, but it was only from AdMob ads. The next logical step was to introduce paid versions of the apps -without ads and with more features. So, I consulted with my accountant about the legal side of things (in Poland, the law doesn’t always keep pace with new technology).

“Paweł, of course you can sell paid apps. You just need to issue an invoice for every app you sell.”

Wait, what?

With AdMob, things were simple from an accounting perspective — Google sends a monthly payment, I issue an invoice to Google, and that’s it. But with even just a few app sales a day, I’d have to spend loads of time manually inputting invoices for each user into my accounting system.

That wasn’t going to work — it didn’t make sense for a solo entrepreneur like me without any employees.

“Is there any other way to handle this, Ms. Accountant?”

“Not for Android. But on the Apple App Store, it’s different. One collective invoice per month to Apple, and you’re good to go.”

Okay, I liked Android at the time, but business is business - so I became an independent iOS developer.

Seriously, if it weren’t for taxes, I probably would’ve stayed with Android.

But the decision was made, 100%. I gathered up my savings, bought a Mac Mini, my first iPhone — an excellent iPhone 4 model-and a few books on Objective-C. There was no turning back.

I wasn’t planning on reinventing the wheel from a business or development perspective, though. I didn’t waste time writing iOS projects for fun. I immediately started converting my two most popular Android apps to iOS- Force Saber of Light and The Whip Sound App.

Since I already had a decent grasp of Pascal, C++, and Java, learning Objective-C as another object-oriented language went fairly smoothly (though Objective-C does have a unique syntax).

After three months, my ad earnings on iOS matched my Android revenue, and once I introduced paid versions, over 70% of my company’s revenue was coming from the App Store, not Android.

I continued supporting my Android apps for a few more years, but for a long time now, the App Store has been a far better source of income for me than Google Play, so I focused 100% on iOS.

Inspiration — Where to Get App Ideas?

In my opinion, if you want to start a business like mine, the best app ideas are the ones that solve a problem you personally have. That way, the app will be useful to you, too.

That’s what I did with the lightsaber app- there was already one on the market, but I just wanted a better version on my phone. So, I had to make it.

I needed a simple currency converter-nothing fancy. Something quick, easy, and always up to date. Sure, there were existing solutions, but I built one that worked the way I wanted — MixCoin.

I also wanted to gain experience working with APIs and AI, and at the same time, I was remodeling my home, looking for interior design inspiration. Of course, I was browsing Pinterest, but despite being a visual person, I couldn’t quite imagine certain styles in my own spaces. The result? Room AI Studio.

I operate a bit like Apple. I’m not always the first to have the best idea on the market. But if I come across something I like, and it’s not perfect, I’m happy to work on the concept to improve it.

The Biggest Challenges at the Beginning

Learning to code (AI won’t do it for you), time, and the costs of getting started.

If you don’t know how to code, you’ll need to learn. This is the biggest quest you have to undertake if you want to become an independent (or even dependent) iOS developer. It’s much easier if you’re already a developer in another field — Swift isn’t difficult (and it’s actually very pleasant to use), so switching over won’t be too hard.

It’s more challenging if you’ve never written a single line of code in your life. But don’t worry — if you’re determined to learn, the resources available today are vastly better and more accessible than they were a decade ago when I started.

To learn how to create iOS apps, you need time. If you’re still in school, you’ve got plenty of time — you just need the motivation and a bit of persistence. If you’re working and have kids, it’s tougher. Pulling all-nighters isn’t always an option, but if you cut down on entertainment time, you can carve out some hours. It all depends on how motivated you are.

And then there are the costs- you need a Mac (an iPhone is technically optional, but I can’t imagine releasing an app that was only tested on the simulator). Add to that the cost of an Apple developer account-you don’t need it for learning, but once your app is ready to publish, you won’t be able to do so without it. Xcode (the software you use to create iOS apps) is free.

If you can overcome these three biggest challenges, the rest won’t be as much of a hurdle.

Building the iOS App Business Solo, Without External Help

I don’t have hard data, but I’d bet that over 80% of the apps in the top 100 aren’t built solo — they’re built by teams. Why do I think that?

Because I know how much time and effort it takes to create and release even a very simple app.

Planning, UX and design (how navigation should work, where the icons should go, what each menu should do, etc.), coding, testing (whether it’s unit tests, behavioral tests, or exploratory testing)-those are some of the typical developer tasks. But the work doesn’t end when the app is released.

• Creating the app icon — you can do it yourself, hire an illustrator, or use Midjourney.
• Writing the app description for the App Store (do you hire a copywriter? Use ChatGPT/Claude?)
• Choosing keywords (SensorTower? AppFigures? Do I guess them myself?)
• Translating the app into other languages (will Google Translate be enough? Maybe DeepL?)
• Writing/generating privacy policies (Iubenda-I don’t even think twice about it)
• Creating a website for marketing materials (hosting, domain, WordPress)

…and so on. There’s a ton of work, and it’s especially hard in the beginning when you don’t know how to approach it. And even when you do, the amount of work doesn’t shrink-you just get faster at handling it.

Having a team makes it quicker, but then you have to pay them and manage them. You can absolutely go that route, but I can’t offer any advice on it because I’ve always worked alone. It’s doable.

You just need to be aware and ready for the fact that as an indie iOS developer, you’ll actually be a business owner, not just a programmer in a company. Coding will take up around 40% of your time. The rest will be spent on marketing.

What Software Developers Hate the Most-Marketing

Marketing apps. Ugh, boring, right? I know — I don’t like it either. I’d much rather spend all day solving coding problems than figuring out how to get users to download my apps. But if you want to create a business- you need marketing.

Preferably the free kind!

There are many techniques: paid ad campaigns, growing social media accounts, paying influencers, content marketing, SEO — these are the most popular ones. But if you want to launch with a low budget, you likely won’t be able to afford most of those — both financially and time-wise.

That’s why the three free marketing techniques I recommend (and that have worked for me, and still do!) for iPhone app businesses are ASO, gathering user reviews, and cross-promotion between apps.

ASO — App Store Optimization

This means optimizing all the marketing materials that Apple allows you to showcase in the App Store for your app. That includes:

• App icon
• Title
• Subtitle
• Keywords
• Description
• Translations into other languages
• Screenshots

Yes, there’s quite a bit of work involved here, especially since when you finish and finally release your app, you’ll be eager to see it live in the App Store right away. But skipping this stage or doing it half-heartedly is a big mistake.

Why? Because before a user ever starts using your app (no matter how great it is), they first need to be convinced to download it from your App Store page. Your main task is to polish that page to the best of your ability.

Cross-Promotion Between Apps

If you have at least two apps in the App Store- that’s great, because you can now promote one within the other and vice versa! Depending on how similar the target audience is for both apps and how good your marketing materials are, the effectiveness will vary. But this is free marketing, so it makes no sense not to take advantage of it.

User Reviews

App reviews are one of the most important factors in ranking your app high in search results. That’s why it often happens that a few days after your app launches, the daily number of installs decreases. But over time, if you gather a lot of good reviews, the number of installs starts to rise.

One of your main tasks when it comes to the long-term maintenance of an app is to gather as many positive reviews as possible. It’s challenging and time-consuming, but it will help stabilize your business and keep your app ranking high for years.

Where to Get Money for Starting Out?

Earn, save, be frugal, invest wisely. To start, you don’t need a leased car, the latest iPhone (the iPhone 16 just came out, and I replaced the battery in my 12 and plan to keep using it), or a set of business cards and corporate swag. That’s all an illusion.

What you do need is a good Mac — I use a Mini and an Air.

The Mini, because it’s the cheapest in Apple’s lineup but has the same technical/programming capabilities as the more expensive machines.

The Air, because a portable laptop is just an extra for me, something I can take on trips or use while lounging on the couch in the evening to get some work done.

You don’t need the latest equipment to start, though if you plan to be in this business for the long term, newer equipment will last you longer. If you have a specific budget, invest in a better computer and a worse phone, not the other way around. That way, you’ll be more productive with your coding while still testing your apps on older phone models, which are far more common on the market than the newer ones.

And you can safely assume that if an app works well on weaker phones, it’ll work on the more powerful ones too (a bit of an oversimplification, but mostly true). One thing though-don’t buy Apple computers with Intel processors, go for the M-series (Apple Silicon).

If you have the budget, treat yourself to a nice, comfortable keyboard. I’m personally a fan of mechanical TKLs, and I can’t imagine working on anything else (especially not on the ones from Apple, which I find extremely uncomfortable). The keyboard is important since you’ll be spending a lot of time typing code.

A good monitor is also essential — you can work on a laptop, but a large external screen is a level of comfort and convenience that’s hard to beat.

Summary

While the road to building a stable iOS app business has been full of challenges, the satisfaction that comes from working on my own projects every day makes it all worthwhile. The independence that comes with being an indie developer is something special, but at the same time, it requires determination and continuous growth. If this sounds like something you’d want to pursue, don’t hesitate to take that first step. Every expert started as a beginner, and your dreams of creating apps can become a reality sooner than you think. Good luck!

What About You?

Are you thinking about starting your own iOS app business or already on your journey? I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, or stories! Drop a comment below, and let’s chat. Let’s connect and help each other along the way — follow me on LinkedIn, check out my apps and my iPhone guides.

Originally published at https://astrophotonsapps.com on October 7, 2024.

How I Built a Successful iPhone App Business as an Indie iOS Developer was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. Enable Reduce Motion for a Smoother Experience and Better Battery Life

Do you ever feel like your iPhone’s animations are a bit too flashy? Or perhaps you’re looking to squeeze more life out of your battery? The Reduce Motion setting is your answer. By dialing down the dynamic animations and parallax effects that make your icons seem to float, this feature not only creates a more streamlined visual experience but also helps conserve battery life.

Here’s how to activate it:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Accessibility.
3. Select Motion.
4. Toggle on Reduce Motion.

Once enabled, you’ll notice that your iPhone’s interface feels snappier and more responsive, particularly on older models. By cutting down on the processing power needed for these animations, this small tweak can contribute to improved battery performance and a smoother overall experience.

2. Maximize Efficiency with Siri Shortcuts

Imagine automating your daily iPhone tasks with just a simple voice command. Siri Shortcuts lets you do just that, allowing you to streamline your routines and make your device work smarter for you. Whether it’s sending a quick text, setting reminders, or launching your favorite playlist, Siri Shortcuts can save you time and effort.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Siri & Search.
3. Select All Shortcuts.
4. Choose and add the shortcuts that fit your needs.

For example, you could create a shortcut to text your partner when you’re leaving work, turn on your home’s smart lights, or even open your favorite podcast. The possibilities are endless, and once set up, a simple voice command will handle these tasks for you. By integrating Siri Shortcuts into your daily routine, you’ll find yourself navigating tasks more efficiently and enjoying a more seamless iPhone experience.

3. Boost Your Privacy by Limiting Ad Tracking

Worried about apps tracking your every move? Limiting ad tracking is a simple yet effective way to enhance your privacy on your iPhone. By restricting apps from tracking your activity, you can significantly reduce the amount of targeted advertising that follows you around online.

Here’s how to limit ad tracking:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Privacy & Security.
3. Select Tracking.
4. Toggle off Allow Apps to Request to Track.

Once this setting is enabled, apps will no longer be able to request permission to track your activity for advertising purposes. Not only does this boost your privacy, but it also cuts down on the number of personalized ads you see, resulting in a cleaner, less intrusive browsing experience. Enjoy a more private and clutter-free interaction with your iPhone.

4. Protect Your Device with Find My iPhone

Losing your iPhone can be a nightmare, but with Find My iPhone enabled, you have a powerful tool to locate your device and keep your data safe. This essential security feature allows you to track your iPhone if it’s lost or stolen, giving you peace of mind that your personal information is protected.

Here’s how to enable Find My iPhone:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on your name (Apple ID) at the top of the screen.
3. Select Find My.
4. Tap on Find My iPhone.
5. Toggle on Find My iPhone.

Once activated, you can also remotely lock or erase your device if necessary, ensuring that your personal information remains secure even if your iPhone falls into the wrong hands. This feature is a must-have for safeguarding your device and data.

5. Extend Your Battery Life with Optimized Battery Charging

Want to keep your iPhone battery in top shape for longer? Optimized Battery Charging is designed to do just that. By learning your charging habits, this feature helps reduce battery wear by delaying the charge past 80% until just before you need to use your iPhone.

Here’s how to enable Optimized Battery Charging:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Battery.
3. Select Battery Health.
4. Toggle on Optimized Battery Charging.

This feature is particularly beneficial for those who charge their iPhones overnight. By slowing down the charging process when your device is near full, it minimizes the strain on the battery, helping to extend its lifespan and reduce the need for battery replacements. Keep your iPhone’s battery healthy and lasting longer with this simple setting.

6. Conserve Battery Life by Managing Background App Refresh

Did you know that some apps continue to update their content even when you’re not using them? While Background App Refresh can be convenient, it’s also a common culprit for draining your battery. By managing which apps are allowed to refresh in the background, you can significantly extend your iPhone’s battery life.

Here’s how to manage Background App Refresh:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on General.
3. Select Background App Refresh.
4. Choose which apps you want to allow to refresh in the background.

Consider turning off Background App Refresh for apps that don’t require constant updates, like social media or news apps. Instead, set them to refresh only when you open them, ensuring your battery isn’t wasted on unnecessary background activity. This simple adjustment can lead to noticeable improvements in battery performance.

7. Enhance Efficiency by Customizing Your Control Center

The Control Center is your iPhone’s quick-access hub for frequently used features. By customizing it to fit your specific needs, you can streamline your daily tasks and make your iPhone experience more efficient and user-friendly.

Here’s how to customize your Control Center:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Control Center.
3. Select Customize Controls.
4. Add or remove controls as needed.

For example, you can add shortcuts for Low Power Mode, screen recording, HomeKit controls, and more. Tailoring the Control Center to your routine can save you valuable time, ensuring that the features you use most are just a swipe away. This customization not only boosts convenience but also enhances the overall usability of your iPhone.

8. Improve Readability by Adjusting Text Size and Display

Struggling to read small text on your iPhone? Adjusting the Text Size and display settings can make a world of difference, especially if you have vision impairments. Customizing these iPhone settings ensures that your screen is easy on the eyes, making your daily use more comfortable.

Here’s how to adjust your text size:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Display & Brightness.
3. Select Text Size.
4. Adjust the slider to your preferred text size.

For even greater readability, consider enabling Bold Text under the same menu. These simple adjustments can prevent eye strain and make reading on your iPhone more enjoyable and accessible.

9. Stay Safe on the Road with Do Not Disturb While Driving

Distracted driving is dangerous, but with Do Not Disturb While Driving, you can minimize distractions and stay focused on the road. This feature silences notifications and sends automatic replies to anyone who messages you while driving, helping you stay safe.

Here’s how to activate Do Not Disturb While Driving on the latest iOS:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Focus.
3. In the upper right corner, tap on the plus icon (+).
4. Select Driving to add this Focus mode.
5. Tap on “Customize Focus” to adjust settings according to your preferences.

You can choose to have this feature activate automatically when your iPhone connects to your car’s Bluetooth or set it to activate manually. By minimizing distractions, you enhance safety for yourself and others on the road.

10. Be Prepared with Medical ID

In an emergency, every second counts. Setting up your Medical ID on your iPhone ensures that first responders have quick access to your critical health information, even from the lock screen. This feature can be life-saving.

Here’s how to set up your Medical ID:

1. Open the Health app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on Medical ID.
3. Select Edit.
4. Enter your medical information.
5. Tap Done.

Your Medical ID can include vital details like allergies, medical conditions, and emergency contacts. This information is accessible even when your iPhone is locked, providing crucial assistance to emergency personnel when you need it most.

Personal Insights: Unlocking the Full Potential of iPhone with Hidden Settings

As an iOS developer with over a decade of experience and millions of app downloads to my name, I’ve learned to appreciate the hidden gems within the iPhone’s settings. These lesser-known features have become indispensable in enhancing my productivity and improving my overall user experience. Here’s how these hidden settings have played a crucial role in my daily life:

• Enhancing Development Efficiency: When developing new apps for Astro Photons, enabling Reduce Motion on my iPhone provides a smoother, faster user interface. This not only speeds up app testing but also offers a more accurate performance representation on older devices, allowing me to fine-tune my apps for a broader audience.
• Streamlining Daily Routines: Siri Shortcuts have been a game-changer in automating repetitive tasks. For example, I’ve created a shortcut that starts my morning routine by checking emails, displaying the weather, and setting work reminders. This automation saves me precious time, making my mornings more productive and less stressful.
• Securing My Device: The Find My iPhone feature has been a lifesaver, especially during travels or busy conferences when my phone has gone missing. Its ability to locate, lock, or erase my device remotely provides peace of mind, ensuring that my personal and professional data remains secure.
• Optimizing Battery Life: The Optimized Battery Charging feature has significantly extended my iPhone’s battery lifespan. By learning my charging habits, it prevents unnecessary battery aging, ensuring my device remains reliable for daily testing and heavy usage, particularly during intensive development periods.
• Improving Readability and Accessibility: Adjusting the Text Size and enabling Bold Text on my iPhone has made reading lengthy code documentation and emails much easier on my eyes. This customization is particularly beneficial during long coding sessions, reducing eye strain and boosting overall productivity.

By leveraging these hidden settings, I’ve optimized my iPhone’s performance, strengthened security, and streamlined my daily routines. These features not only demonstrate the iPhone’s versatility but also highlight the importance of exploring and utilizing all available tools to maximize your device’s potential.

Conclusion

Utilizing these hidden iPhone settings can significantly enhance your device’s performance, improve privacy, and personalize your user experience. I encourage you to explore these tips and make the most of your iPhone. By implementing these settings, you’ll not only make your iPhone more efficient but also tailor it to your personal preferences and needs.

Stay Ahead with the Latest iPhone Tips and Tricks!

Love discovering hidden iPhone settings like these? Don’t miss out on more exclusive tips, tricks, and expert insights to help you get the most out of your device.

Join our Astro Photons Apps newsletter and be the first to learn about the latest iPhone features, app recommendations, and much more. Sign up now and take your iPhone experience to the next level!

Originally published at https://astrophotonsapps.com on May 24, 2024.

Unlock These 10 Hidden iPhone Settings to Boost Your Device was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hello, iOS developers! My name is Paweł, and I’m the iOS developer and publisher behind the Astro Photons Apps.

Almost two years ago I published 27 iOS open source libraries to skyrocket your development. It is my best story (regarding Medium users reactions) here ever:

If 155 thousand people are concerned enough to break through a wall of text on the Internet to find the best iOS open source libraries, I deliver.

Spying on my GitHub profile I have found over 180 new starred repositories from the time, so it is an excellent occasion to update my Medium content.

Say hello to 33 pods, that will skyrocket your development in 2017. Ignition started.

On the bottom of the story you will find a TL;DR summary list that contains all these libraries, links to them, and CocoaPods names (if available). No need to take notes during the reading. Now let’s go to the business.

1. IGListKit by Instagram Engineering

Made by Instagram developers, IGListKit is data-driven UICollectionView framework for building fast and flexible lists. Also, it helps you to not ending with Massive View Controllers in your app. Check out the tutorial from Ray Wenderlich about implementing this library in your project, or read this story from Rodrigo Cavalcante about migrating your existing UITableView to IGListCollectionView.

GitHub - Instagram/IGListKit: A data-driven UICollectionView framework for building fast and flexible lists.

2. Realm by realm.io

Realm is a mobile database that runs directly inside phones, tablets and wearables, not only on iOS. If you want to taste something different than Core Data, try Realm. Many people say it is a modern, production ready replacement for the native Apple solution.

realm/realm-cocoa

3. Moya by Ash Furrow

Moya is a missing network layer for your app. Instead of thinking where (and how) you should put your network requests, Moya handle this for you.

GitHub - Moya/Moya: Network abstraction layer written in Swift.

4. SwiftyJSON by Pinglin Tang

The king of JSON parsing in Swift.

Transform this:

if let statusesArray = try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: .allowFragments) as? [[String: Any]],
    let user = statusesArray[0]["user"] as? [String: Any],
    let username = user["name"] as? String {
    // Finally we got the username
}

into this:

let json = JSON(data: dataFromNetworking)
if let userName = json[0]["user"]["name"].string {
  // Now you got your value
}

Optional wrapping is done for you automatically.

GitHub - SwiftyJSON/SwiftyJSON: The better way to deal with JSON data in Swift.

5. Valet by Square

Valet lets you securely store data in the iOS or OS X Keychain without knowing a thing about how the Keychain works. It supports sharing data among multiple applications (of the same developer) on a single device and sharing in one application across devices with iCloud. Touch ID support? No problem.

GitHub - square/Valet: Valet lets you securely store data in the iOS, tvOS, or macOS Keychain without knowing a thing about how the Keychain works. It's easy. We promise.

6. Firebase Analytics by Google Developers

Made (well, acquired) by Google, probably the best free analytics solution for iOS. Track app usage, user engagement, and events; set user properties; create custom audiences; and more.

Firebase Analytics | Firebase

7. AsyncDisplayKit

Facebook built this asynchronous UI SDK for their app Paper. If you are interested in rendering your app at 60 frames per second always, definitely take a look at this library. Here you can read a story from the Buffer team:

• Smooth Scrolling in Buffer for iOS: How (and Why) We Implemented AsyncDisplayKit
• facebook/AsyncDisplayKit

8. DZNEmptyDataSet

A user installed your app, and he sees a blank UITableView. DZNEmptyDataSet helps you avoid it by providing a default implementation of the Empty Data Set Pattern.

dzenbot/DZNEmptyDataSet

9. Chameleon by Vicc Alexander

Chameleon is a lightweight, yet powerful, color framework for iOS. It is built on the idea that software applications should function effortlessly while simultaneously maintaining their beautiful interfaces.

With Chameleon, you can easily stop tinkering with RGB values, wasting hours figuring out the right color combinations to use in your app, and worrying about whether your text will be readable on the various background colors of your app.

viccalexander/Chameleon

10. PermissionScope by Nick O'Neill

PermissionScope is a Swift framework for intelligently requesting permissions from users. It contains not only a simple UI to request permissions but also a unified permissions API that can tell you the status of any given system permission or easily request them.

nickoneill/PermissionScope

11. FileKit by Nikolai Vazquez

FileKit is a Swift framework that provides simple and expressive file management. Take a look at usage examples.

GitHub - nvzqz/FileKit: Simple and expressive file management in Swift

12. SwiftyUserDefaults by Radek Pietruszewski

SwiftyUserDefaults makes user defaults enjoyable to use by combining expressive Swifty API with the benefits of static typing. Define your keys in one place, use value types easily, and get extra safety and convenient compile-time checks for free.

radex/SwiftyUserDefaults

13. Kingfisher by 王巍(Wei Wang)

Kingfisher is a lightweight, pure-Swift library for asynchronous downloading and caching images from the web.

GitHub - onevcat/Kingfisher: A lightweight, pure-Swift library for downloading and caching images from the web.

14. Hero by Luke Zhao

Hero is a library for building iOS view controller transitions. It provides a layer on top of the UIKit’s cumbersome transition APIs, making custom transitions an easy task for developers.

GitHub - lkzhao/Hero: Elegant transition library for iOS & tvOS

15. Hedwig by 王巍(Wei Wang)

Hedwig is a Swift package which supplies a set of high level APIs to allow you sending email to an SMTP server easily. If you are planning to send emails from your next amazing Swift server app, Hedwig might be a good choice.

onevcat/Hedwig

16. DeviceKit by Dennis Weissmann

DeviceKit is a value-type replacement for UIDevice. Get your device info and battery level easily.

dennisweissmann/DeviceKit

17. Charts

Beautiful line, pie, bar, scatter, bubble, radar, and more, charts library.

GitHub - danielgindi/Charts: Beautiful charts for iOS/tvOS/OSX! The Apple side of the crossplatform MPAndroidChart.

18. MGSwipeTableCell

An easy to use UITableViewCell subclass that allows to display swipeable buttons with a variety of transitions.

MortimerGoro/MGSwipeTableCell

19. RandomKit by Nikolai Vazquez

Simple and easy random data generation.

• #285: Generating Random Data with RandomKit 🎲
• nvzqz/RandomKit

20. ResponseDetective

ResponseDetective is a non-intrusive framework for intercepting any outgoing requests and incoming responses between your app and your server for debugging purposes.

• HTTP Debugging in iOS Made Easier with ResponseDetective
• netguru/ResponseDetective

21. Onboard

Easily create a beautiful and engaging onboarding experience with only a few lines of code.

mamaral/Onboard

22. Quick + Nimble by もどかしい

Quick is the Swift and Objective-C BDD testing framework, accompanying by Nimble, a matcher framework.

• GitHub - Quick/Quick: The Swift (and Objective-C) testing framework.
• GitHub - Quick/Nimble: A Matcher Framework for Swift and Objective-C

23. Natalie by Marcin Krzyzanowski

Natalie generates Swift code based on storyboard files to make work with Storyboards and segues easier. Generated file reduce usage of Strings as identifiers for Segues or Storyboards.

krzyzanowskim/Natalie

24. RxSwift by ReactiveExtensions*

Interested in reactive programming in Swift? Here is RxSwift.

GitHub - ReactiveX/RxSwift: Reactive Programming in Swift

25. GDPerformanceView by Daniil Gavrilov

GDPerformanceView shows FPS, CPU usage, app and iOS versions above the status bar and reports FPS and CPU usage via delegate.

dani-gavrilov/GDPerformanceView-Swift

26. Alamofire

Alamofire is an HTTP networking library written in Swift.

• The Absolute Guide to Networking in Swift with Alamofire
• GitHub - Alamofire/Alamofire: Elegant HTTP Networking in Swift

27. SwiftyStoreKit by Andrea Bizzotto

SwiftyStoreKit is a lightweight In App Purchases framework for iOS 8.0+, tvOS 9.0+ and macOS 10.10+.

bizz84/SwiftyStoreKit

28. Timepiece by AnyType

Intuitive date handling in Swift.

naoty/Timepiece

29. CryptoSwift by Marcin Krzyzanowski

Cryptography related functions and helpers for Swift implemented in Swift.

GitHub - krzyzanowskim/CryptoSwift: CryptoSwift is a growing collection of standard and secure cryptographic algorithms implemented in Swift

30. FSCalendar

A fully customizable iOS calendar library, compatible with Objective-C and Swift.

GitHub - WenchaoD/FSCalendar: A fully customizable iOS calendar library, compatible with Objective-C and Swift

31. ImageViewer by Kristian Angyal

An image viewer à la Twitter.

MailOnline/ImageViewer

32. PromiseKit

PromiseKit is a thoughtful and complete implementation of promises for any platform with a swiftc, it has excellentObjective-C bridging and delightful specializations for iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS.

GitHub - mxcl/PromiseKit: Promises for Swift & ObjC.

33. Ensembles by Drew McCormack

Ensembles is an Objective-C framework — with Swift support — that extends Apple’s Core Data framework to add peer-to-peer synchronization for Mac OS and iOS. Multiple SQLite persistent stores can be coupled together via a file synchronization platform like iCloud or Dropbox. The framework can be readily extended to support any service capable of moving files between devices, including custom servers.

TL;DR list of libraries for quick access:

1. IGListKit [UICollectionView framework] -> pod 'IGListKit', '~> 2.0.0'
2. Realm [mobile database] -> pod 'RealmSwift'
3. Moya [encapsulated network layer] -> pod 'Moya', '8.0.0'
4. SwiftyJSON [JSON parsing] -> pod 'SwiftyJSON'
5. Valet [Keychain helper] -> pod 'Valet'
6. Firebase Analytics [analytics] -> pod 'Firebase/Core'
7. AsyncDisplayKit [asynchronous UI SDK] -> pod 'AsyncDisplayKit'
8. DZNEmptyDataSet [empty state pattern] -> pod 'DZNEmptyDataSet'
9. Chameleon [flat colors framework] -> pod 'ChameleonFramework/Swift', :git => 'https://github.com/ViccAlexander/Chameleon.git'
10. PermissionScope [iOS permissions framework] -> pod 'PermissionScope'
11. FileKit [file management] -> pod 'FileKit', '~> 4.0.0'
12. SwiftyUserDefaults [user defaults helper] -> pod 'SwiftyUserDefaults'
13. Kingfisher [image downloading] -> pod 'Kingfisher', '~> 3.0'
14. Hero [custom view controller transitions] -> pod 'Hero'
15. Hedwig [email sending]
16. DeviceKit [device info] -> pod 'DeviceKit', '~> 1.0'
17. Charts [well… charts] -> pod 'Charts'
18. MGSwipeTableCell [swipeable table cells] -> pod 'MGSwipeTableCell'
19. RandomKit [random numbers generation] -> pod 'RandomKit', '~> 3.0.0'
20. ResponseDetective [debug network requests] -> pod 'ResponseDetective'
21. Onboard [user onboarding] -> pod 'Onboard'
22. Quick + Nimble [BDD testing] -> pod 'Quick'
    pod 'Nimble'
23. Natalie [code generating from storyboard]
24. RxSwift [reactive programming] -> pod 'RxSwift', '~> 3.0'
25. GDPerformanceView [real time FPS and CPU usage] -> pod 'GDPerformanceView-Swift', '~> 1.1.0'
26. Alamofire [networking] -> pod 'Alamofire', '~> 4.3'
27. SwiftyStoreKit [In App Purchases] -> pod 'SwiftyStoreKit'
28. Timepiece [date helper] -> pod 'Timepiece'
29. CryptoSwift [cryptography] -> pod 'CryptoSwift'
30. FSCalendar [calendar] -> pod 'FSCalendar'
31. ImageViewer [Twitter inspired image viewer] -> pod 'ImageViewer'
32. PromiseKit [promises] -> pod 'PromiseKit', '~> 4.0'
33. Ensembles [Core Data synchronization] -> pod 'Ensembles'

Thanks for reading, that was not the shortest article you can read on Medium! If you liked this story, click the 💚 below and share this post with your friends, so more people will discover these fantastic libraries. You can also follow me on Twitter, where I tweet mostly on iOS development. Thank you!

Thanks for reading! Like, share, follow, and see you soon!

33 iOS open source libraries that will dominate 2017. was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And not only for beginners.

So you have decided that you want to learn iOS development, but you have no idea where to start?

I’ve been at this point too.

Make a coffee, sit down and relax — this post is exactly what you need to start your adventure into iOS programming.

Hi, I’m Paweł, an independent iOS developer making iPhone apps.

Let’s face it — in the Internet you can find anything. Anyone can write, anyone can publish. This makes us some inconvinience— sometimes it’s hard to find really valueable, error-free content.

And this is why I’ve created this list. Below you will find 27 hand-selected websites that provide truly quality content for people who want to learn iOS development — from scratch mostly, but intermediate and advanced devs will find something for them too.

Less talk, more action. The first and the best place to learn iOS development is…

1. Apple documentation — Swift Overview

Official Apple documentation has always outstanding quality — no difference here. If you are newbie who wants to become an iOS developer, here you will find a great introduction to the programming language used in iOS programming — Swift. Also you will get familiar with accompanied tools — Xcode, Playgrounds and REPL.

If you had to choose only one learning resource from this post, pick this — and dive into a massive, official Swift documentation provided by Apple.

Swift - Apple Developer

2. Ry’s Objective-C Tutorial

If you want to learn Objective-C (and as an iOS developer you should know at least basics), this is the best place to do it.

It covers some pre-Objective-C required knowledge (basics of C), friendly introduction to the iOS programming as a whole (frameworks, philosophy, Xcode etc) and to the language itself — functions, classes, properties, methods, protocols, blocks, memory management and many, many more.

Even if don’t want to learn Objective-C and go 100% the Swift way, learn this short course — it’s a very good starting point and knowing these topics should be enough for a Swift developer to not drown in the Objective-C sea.

Ry's Objective-C Tutorial - RyPress

3. Stanford iTunes video course

Prefer video content over text? Check Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift by Stanford University — it totally rocks!

Paul Hegarty will tour you from the beginning — iOS overview, basics of Xcode, MVC pattern and Swift — to advanced topics — protocols, segues, Core Location, camera, internationalization and many more. He’s a brilliant teacher and Stanford is a great university publishing this content for free for everyone. Definitely watch this course.

Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift by Stanford.

4. AppCoda

This is by far my favorite site with step-by-step iOS programming tutorials. You will find there guides for many topics — making Apple Watch apps, notifications, widgets, language tips and tricks, In-App Purchases, Core Data basics and many, many more. All of this shown step by step using understanable language, ideal for beginners.

I’ve learnt a ton of knowledge from this site and 8500 fans on Facebook cannot be wrong.

AppCoda

5. Ray Wenderlich

A classic one! It’s probably the most known tutorial site in the iOS developers community and I know why — because it’s great. It’s bigger than AppCoda and has more authors, more content and use more Internet memes in it’s articles!

If you want to invest in yourself, then be sure to check out their premium videos and eBooks — they are definitely worth recommending too.

Ray Wenderlich

6. NSScreencast

Do you like weekly-delivered medium-sized portions of video content and by the way you want to learn some iOS development? Then I got something for you — it’s NSScreencast! It costs a few dollars per month (there are some free videos too, but not too many), so calculate if it’s worth your money.

NSScreencast: Bite-sized Screencasts for iOS Development

7. Cocoa Dev Central

This site can be a little outdated and I’m not sure if there is someone still working on it, but some topics aren’t changing too often — and one of that topics is Objective-C. If you want to learn this language, you’ll find there really great tutorials for it (just be careful — Objective-C was/is evolving too).

Cocoa Dev Central

8. NSHipster

Amazing place for in-depth learning specific Cocoa topics. Want to know about method swizzling, Swift literal convertibles, NSFileManager, iCloud or Clang diagnostics? Go and read all the archives, this is the site for you.

NSHipster

9. Coding Explorer

GREAT blog for learning iOS development, especially Swift — you will be learning together with the author, as he’s currently learning too. Blog is new and updated regularly, definitely add it to your RSS reader. A ton of interesting topics around Swift.

Coding Explorer Blog - Exploring how to code for iOS in Swift and Objective-C

10. iOS Dev Weekly

Weekly newletter (probably the most popular one) about iOS development — hot news, dev tutorials, tools, design and marketing articles — everything that every iOS programmer needs. 200th issue went live last Friday and it seems that nothing can stop it! Just subscribe.

iOS Dev Weekly - The best iOS development links, every Friday

11. objc

Objc is a monthly periodical about best practices and advanced techniques for iOS and OS X development. Every issue is focused on a one, specific topic like audio, Swift or Core Data. It’s probably not a good fit for true beginners, but if you already know the basics of iOS development, go there and learn some intermediate and advanced topics too.

Audio - objc.io issue #24

12. Cocoa Is My Girlfriend

One of the best iOS programming blogs on the Internet. The author is a truly passionate developer and a really good teacher — this combination makes his blog a very, very good resource for new developers.

Cocoa Is My Girlfriend | Taglines are for Windows programmers

13. A Better Way to Learn Swift

If you want to learn Swift from scratch and also you like structured, step by step tutorials with progress tracking — here you have one. You will walk through the full Swift course — from basic syntax and variables to closures, enums, classes, initializers and functional programming concepts. Pair this course up with the official Apple docs and you’ll become an advanced Swift programmer very fast.

A Better Way to Learn Swift

14. iCode blog

A place where you will find more advanced tutorials, but not only them— there is a room for beginners too.

iOS | iPhone Programming Tutorials

15. ManiacDev

ManiacDev is a very well known website in the iOS developers community. It provides not only tutorials and courses, but also links to the new open source libraries, tools or UI controls. It’s updated very often and with very good content. Add to your RSS reader.

iOS App Dev Libraries, Controls, Tutorials, Examples and Tools

16. Tutorials Point

Tutorials Point provides iOS programming tutorials broken into single, specific categories like camera management, accelerometer, location handling or storyboards. It’s good if you want to learn some specific programming niche.

iOS (iPhone, iPad) Tutorial

17. Natasha The Robot

Natasha writes mostly on Swift and WatchKit — and if you are interested in these topics (who wouldn’t?), you should read her blog.

Natasha The Robot

18. Tuts+

Tuts+ is a great place for beginners, not only because of the easy to read tutorials, but also because of selected topics. They cover real basics of iOS development — creating first app, first steps into Foundation and UIKit, how table view works and many, many more.

Learn iOS SDK Development From Scratch - Tuts+ Code Tutorials

19. Code School

If you don’t mind paying for learning, here you have a nice video course — good for leveling from beginner to intermediate.

Learn How to Make an iPhone App - Code School

20. Udemy

Another paid course, but this is focused strictly on Swift. 13 hours of content divided into 194 lessons will teach you A LOT about the iOS programming language of choice.

Learn Swift: Build Apps with Swift Programming Language

21. NSCookbook

NSCookbook provides recipies for solving some concrete problems for iOS developers. Want to know how to skin a UIButton? Maybe you want to know how to use property lists? Or maybe you want to know how to use blocks (hello Objective-C) in real life situations? Say hello to NSCookbook, your best new friend.

Recipes

22. iOS-Blog

Another great iOS programming blog covering subjects like Swift, integration of external libraries, sending emails, asynchronous programming and many more. Definitely check it out, especially if you are a fan of beautiful, flat graphic design.

iOS-Blog - Tutorials, Tools and Resources for iPhone Developers

23. Bloc — Build your first iOS game

Interested in game programming on iOS? Bloc provides a free tutorial on creating 2D puzzle game in SpriteKit, Apple’s 2D game engine/framework. Build a Tetris clone, step by step. Recommended.

Bloc | Online Programs in Web Development, Mobile Development, and Design

24. Use Your Loaf

Great programming blog run by an iOS, Mac and Ruby on Rails developer. How to create a CocoaPod, how to read QR codes, how to write effective Objective-C 2.0 and more. A lot of practical, real-life examples.

Use Your Loaf

25. Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow isn’t a blog or website with tutorials like majority of the sites above. Stack Overflow is a Q&A (questions and answers) community focused on programming in general, not only on iOS.

On Stack Overflow you can ask your questions and get great answers, you can comment and help other people with their code, you can also just browse some code snippets and solutions for popular programming problems.

Really recommended site, especially if you have a specific problem for which you cannot find some kind of tutorial or how-to guide.

Stack Overflow - Where Developers Learn, Share, & Build Careers

26. GitHub

GitHub is a social platform for developers focused on code sharing and programming together with other developers. On GitHub you can create your repositories (public or private ones), share them and watch other dev’s repos. This is one of the best way to learn fast — see what other programmers do, read their code and inhale good practicies from them.

Btw if you are looking for some great open source iOS libraries on GitHub, check out my other post about them.

GitHub · Change is constant. GitHub keeps you ahead. · GitHub

27. ASCIIwwdc

And for the end I have some very special for you. ASCIIwwdc is a searchable database of full-text transcripts from all Apple WWDC sessions. If you don’t have time to buffer and watch lasting at least an hour WWDC videos, you can just simply screen text transcriptions and find topics you are interested in. A huge timesaver.

ASCIIwwdc

I hope this list will be useful for you. I have been learning iOS programming from all of the above sites and I can truly recommend them for every wannabe iOS developer.

If you find this post worth reading, please click the share button below — it can help other newbie iOS devs too, and also it will spread the good word about all that amazing authors standing behind these tutorials. Also, if you are a Medium user, please click the Recommend button — it truly inspires me to write more when I see other people find my work useful!

You can also follow me on Twitter:

Paweł Białecki (@pawel_bialecki) | Twitter

Recommended read:

10 steps to become a professional iOS developer.

27 places to learn iOS development. Best ones. was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You do have a Twitter account, do you?

If not, now is the time to change it.

A lot of iOS specialists — developers, designers, Apple employees, bloggers, trendsetters — has Google+ accounts, some of them has also Facebook profiles/pages, but the real vast majority of our community use Twitter as a main (and often as the only one) social media channel.

For every iOS developer, Twitter is the place to be and to get the latest hot news from the iOS world.

So if you don’t use Twitter yet, start now and follow these 52 people.

1. Tim Cook

CEO of Apple, the boss of bosses.

Tim Cook (@tim_cook) | Twitter

2. Chris Lattner

Swift creator.

Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm) | Twitter

3. Matt Galloway

iOS developer, book author.

Matt Galloway (@mattjgalloway) | Twitter

4. Ash Furrow

iOS developer, book author.

Ash Furrow (@ashfurrow) | Twitter

5. Ole Begemann

iOS and Mac developer.

Ole Begemann (@olebegemann) | Twitter

6. Chris Eidhof

iOS developer, author of objc.io.

Chris Eidhof (@chriseidhof) | Twitter

7. Mattt Thompson

iOS developer, open source contributor (AFNetworking), NSHipster founder.

Mattt (@mattt) | Twitter

8. Ray Wenderlich

iOS developer, tutorial creator, book author.

Ray Wenderlich (@rwenderlich) | Twitter

9. Dave Verwer

Author of iOS Dev Weekly.

Dave Verwer (@daveverwer) | Twitter

10. Graham Clarke

Designer at Apple.

Graham Clarke (@espresso) | Twitter

11. Krzysztof Zabłocki

iOS developer, creator of Playgrounds for Objective-C.

Krzysztof Zabłocki (@merowing_) | Twitter

12. Paweł Dudek

iOS developer, conference organizer.

Pawel Dudek (@eldudi) | Twitter

13. Simon Ng

Founder of AppCoda.

Simon Ng (@simonng) | Twitter

14. Scott Anguish

Senior iOS developer in Apple.

Scott Anguish (@sanguish) | Twitter

15. Chris Hanson

iOS developer in Apple.

Chris Hanson (@eschaton) | Twitter

16. Florian Kugler

iOS and Mac developer, author in objc.io

Florian Kugler (@floriankugler) | Twitter

17. Daniel Eggert

iOS developer, author in objc.io

Daniel Eggert (@danielboedewadt) | Twitter

18. Eric Vitiello

iOS developer in Apple.

Eric Vitiello (@pixel) | Twitter

19. Ben Sandofsky

iOS developer, Technical Consultant to HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Ben Sandofsky (@sandofsky) | Twitter

20. Orta Therox

iOS developer, contributor in CocoaPods.

💍rta Therox (@orta) | Twitter

21. Andreas Linde

iOS developer.

Andreas Linde (@therealkerni) | Twitter

22. Neil Inglis

iOS and Mac developer.

Neil Inglis (@neilinglis) | Twitter

23. Mikael Konradsson

iOS developer.

Mikael Konradsson (@konrad1977) | Twitter

24. Alex Curylo

iOS developer.

Alex Curylo (@trollwerks) | Twitter

25. Peter Steinberger

iOS developer, author of the most advanced iOS PDF framework.

Peter Steinberger (@steipete) | Twitter

26. Matt Gemmell

Writer and novelist.

Matt Gemmell (@mattgemmell) | Twitter

27. Andy Matuschak

Ex-Apple UIKit developer, lead mobile developer at Khan Academy.

Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak) | Twitter

28. Christopher Truman

iOS developer.

Christopher Truman (@iAmChrisTruman) | Twitter

29. Marcin Krzyżanowski

iOS developer.

Marcin Krzyzanowski (@krzyzanowskim) | Twitter

30. Chad Mureta

Book author, mobile entrepreneur.

Chad Mureta (@ChadMureta) | Twitter

31. Jon Reid

iOS developer.

Jon Reid (@qcoding) | Twitter

32. Marcus Zarra

iOS devleoper, blogger in Cocoa is My Girlfriend.

Marcus S. Zarra (@mzarra) | Twitter

33. Bart Jacobs

iOS developer, blogger.

Bart Jacobs (@_bartjacobs) | Twitter

34. Greg Heo

iOS developer.

Greg Heo (@gregheo) | Twitter

35. Carter Thomas

Mobile entrepreneur, book author, blogger.

Carter Thomas (@carterthomas) | Twitter

36. Nate Cook

iOS developer, creator of SwiftDoc.org.

Nate Cook (@nnnnnnnn) | Twitter

37. Natasha Murashev

iOS developer, blogger, This week in Swift curator.

NatashaTheRobot (@NatashaTheRobot) | Twitter

38. Delisa Mason

Creator of Alcatraz Xcode package manager, CocoaPods Core Team member.

Delisa (@kattrali) | Twitter

39. Aaron Brethorst

iOS developer, creator of CocoaControls.

Aaron Brethorst (@aaronbrethorst) | Twitter

40. Felix Krause

iOS developer.

Felix Krause (@KrauseFx) | Twitter

41. Joe Groff

iOS developer in Apple, work on Swift compiler.

Joe Groff (@jckarter) | Twitter

42. Ole Zorn

iOS developer, blogger.

olemoritz

43. David Smith

iOS developer.

David Smith (@_DavidSmith) | Twitter

44. Mike Rundle

iOS designer and developer.

Mike Rundle (@flyosity) | Twitter

45. Keith Shepherd

iOS developer, creator of Temple Run.

Keith Shepherd (@kshepherd) | Twitter

46. Dan Counsell

iOS and Mac developer.

Dan Counsell (@dancounsell) | Twitter

47. Aaron Hillegass

Book author.

Aaron Hillegass (@AaronHillegass) | Twitter

48. Oliver Drobnik

iOS developer.

Cocoanetics  (@Cocoanetics) | Twitter

49. Kimon Tsinteris

Ex-Apple engineer, currently in Facebook.

Kimon Tsinteris (@kimon) | Twitter

50. Joe Conway

iOS developer, book author.

Joe Conway (@joeconwaystk) | Twitter

51. Sophia Teutschler

UIKit Frameworks Engineer at Apple, founder of Sophiestication Software.

Sophia Teutschler (@_soaps) | Twitter

52. Steve Wozniak

Apple co-founder.

Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) | Twitter

I hope you’ll find this list useful and it will be a good starting point for you into iOS community on Twitter. Of course this is only a small fraction of the great people there — based on your follows, Twitter will recommend you more users. Follow them and stay in touch!

If you like this article, please click the Share button below and take a part in spreading the word about the good people! Also if you are a Medium user, please click the Recommend button — it really gives me an inspirtion to create more posts. Thanks!

P.S. Looking for some iOS apps for geeks, developers and power users? Check out my portfolio of iOS apps — maybe you’ll find something useful!

You can find me on Twitter too:

Paweł Białecki (@pawel_bialecki) | Twitter

Recommended reads:

• 10 steps to become a professional iOS developer.
• 27 iOS open source libraries to skyrocket your development.

52 people every iOS developer should follow on Twitter. was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You don’t want to miss them. Really.

I love open source.

And I love the developers, who spend their valuable private time creating amazing things, which then they share with other people and don’t want anything in return. Open-source authors and contributors, you are awesome people. Thank you for all your work.

Here I’ve selected favorites from my favorites iOS open source libraries that I use daily making iPhone apps as Astro Photons Apps for my indie app business. Order of these projects is totally random, all of them are simply awesome.

MixCoin - iPhone Currency Converter Calculator App

The overwhelming majority of the libraries support CocoaPods, so adding them to your Xcode project is a breeze.

On the bottom of the article you will find a TL;DR version — a simple list with only titles and links to the projects. If you’ll find this article useful, share it with your iOS dev buddies. Good things need to spread.

1. DZNEmptyDataSet

This should be a standard, built-in into iOS way of dealing with empty table and collection views. By default if your table view is empty, the screen is empty. It’s not the best user experience you can have.

With this library you just need to conform to a few protocols and iOS will beautifully take care of your collection view and display proper, good looking to user messages. No brainer for every iOS project.

CocoaPods:

pod 'DZNEmptyDataSet'

dzenbot/DZNEmptyDataSet

2. PDTSimpleCalendar

Need a simple, nice looking and working calendar component for your app? Now you have — PDTSimpleCalendar is probably the best calendar component for iOS. You can customize it in many ways, both working logic and looking.

CocoaPods:

pod 'PDTSimpleCalendar'

jivesoftware/PDTSimpleCalendar

3. MagicalRecord

Core Data is simple, they said. It’s nice and simple, they said. Huh, really, Apple? A ton of boilerplate code added to each project isn’t very elegant and simple. Not to mention adding, removing and updating a lot of entities, saving context, creating different Core Data stacks for different environments etc, etc. I like Core Data very much of course, but Apple really could simplify it in a little better way — the MagicalRecord way.

MagicalRecord works like a wrapper for Core Data and hides from developer all non-relevant stuff. If you’ve ever worked with active record pattern (e.g. Ruby on Rails), you’re in home. Really, really recommended library if you are using Core Data in your app.

CocoaPods:

pod 'MagicalRecord'

magicalpanda/MagicalRecord

4. Chameleon

If you are reading this, odds that you’re a better programmer than a designer are very high. This is something for you.

Chameleon is a color framework for iOS. It extends UIColor with beautiful, modern flat colors. It also gives us ability to create color palletes from color defined by us. It can do many other things, explore readme. If you want beautiful application, definitely add this library to your project.

CocoaPods:

pod 'ChameleonFramework'

viccalexander/Chameleon

5. Alamofire

Alamofire is an elegant networking library written in Swift. Have you ever been using AFNetworking? Alamofire is it’s younger brother. Younger and more stylish, of course (AFNetworking is written in Objective-C).

Need to do networking stuff like downloading, uploading, getting JSONs etc.? Alamofire is for you. 8000 people on GitHub cannot be wrong.

CocoaPods:

pod 'Alamofire'

GitHub - Alamofire/Alamofire: Elegant HTTP Networking in Swift

6. TextFieldEffects

Don’t you think that standard UITextField is a little boring? Me too — so say hello to TextFieldEffects! I won’t write too much, I’ll just show you a few examples what this library can do:

Yep, these are simple drop-in controllers. You can even make use from IBDesignables in storyboard!

CocoaPods:

 pod 'TextFieldEffects'

Carthage:

github "raulriera/TextFieldEffects"

raulriera/TextFieldEffects

7. GPUImage

Have you ever created a camera app? If not, you surely will after meeting this library.

GPUImage provides us a GPU-accelerated camera effects (both images and video) with blazing speed. There are hundreds of apps in the App Store that use this library — and one mine’s too:

8869 stars on GitHub and still counting.

CocoaPods:

pod 'GPUImage'

BradLarson/GPUImage

8. iRate

What’s the best way to get more reviews in the App Store? I don’t have hard data to answer that question, but if I had to guess, I would say that simple asking the user. Maybe it’s a little oldschool way to do this— most developers now create custom in-app alerts — but if you don’t have time or you don’t want to implement everything from scratch, it’s better to use iRate than not to. And this is iRate exactly — a small library that you include in your project and forget about asking users for review — iRate will do it for you, at proper time.

CocoaPods:

pod 'iRate'

nicklockwood/iRate

9. GameCenterManager

Love or hate singletons, but in this case managing Game Center is just easier with a little help of our best known anti-pattern (you have only one Game Center in your game, right?).

To be honest, vanilla-managing Game Center in iOS isn’t that hard, but with this library is just simple and fast. And better is the enemy of the good.

I’m using this in one of my games and it’s a pleasure experience.

CocoaPods:

pod 'GameCenterManager'

nihalahmed/GameCenterManager

10. PKRevealController 2

This is a real gem here, one of my most favorited iOS control. PKRevealController is a slideable side menu (left, right or both), which slides with a help of your finger (or just by pressing the button, but it’s not as much cool as sliding).

I’ve tried a few other libraries providing this kind of control and PKRevealController is just the best. Very easy to setup, highly customizable and recognizes gestures very, very well. It could be included in iOS SDK as a standard control, really.

CocoaPods:

pod 'PKRevealController'

pkluz/PKRevealController

11. SlackTextViewController

Have you ever used Slack iOS app? If you are working in a bigger software company, probably yes. For these people who haven’t — Slack rocks. And Slack’s iOS app too, especially for the great, custom text input control… which here you have — a code ready for use in your app!

Self growing text area? Check.Gestures recognizing, autocompletion, multimedia pasting? Check. Easy drop-in solution? Check. What else can you possibly need?

CocoaPods:

pod 'SlackTextViewController'

slackhq/SlackTextViewController

12. RETableViewManager

RETableViewManager will help you with dynamically creating and managing your table views, everything in code. It deliver us predefined cells (for bools, texts, dates etc. — check screenshots below), but you can also create your custom views and use them along with the default ones.

All of this stuff you can do in storyboard without help of this library, but sometimes code is simply better than visual editor.

CocoaPods:

pod 'RETableViewManager'

romaonthego/RETableViewManager

13. PermissionScope

Useful library to deliver better user experience by informing user about needed system permissions before asking user for them. Higher acceptance rate -> more users actively using the app -> better retention -> better stats -> more downloads. Highly recommended pod.

CocoaPods:

pod 'PermissionScope'

nickoneill/PermissionScope

14. SVProgressHUD

This image is loaded properly, don’t wait longer and don’t refresh the page. This is exactly how SVProgressHUD looks like in your app. If you need custom waiting indicator, here you have (the best probably) one.

CocoaPods:

pod 'SVProgressHUD'

TransitApp/SVProgressHUD

15. FontAwesomeKit

Font Awesome is awesome and with this library you can easily add the font to your project and use it in many ways.

CocoaPods:

pod 'FontAwesomeKit'

PrideChung/FontAwesomeKit

16. SnapKit

Love auto layout? You should!

At least when creating it in storyboards.

Creating constraints in code is painful without some help, but luckily SnapKit is here and with it on board you can code your constraints in easy, declarative way. Check it out.

CocoaPods:

pod 'SnapKit'

GitHub - SnapKit/SnapKit: A Swift Autolayout DSL for iOS & OS X

17. MGSwipeTableCell

Another UI component, that is so often seen in many apps that Apple should probably think about including something similar in standard iOS SDK. Swipeable table cell, this is the best description of this pod. The best one.

These are just 3 animation types, there are more of them. Explore readme.

CocoaPods:

pod 'MGSwipeTableCell'

MortimerGoro/MGSwipeTableCell

18. Quick

Unit testing in Swift, for Swift (ok, for Objective-C too), integrated with Xcode. If you are Objective-C fan, I would recommend Specta instead of this, but for Swift Quick will be probably the best shot.

CocoaPods:

pod 'Quick'

GitHub - Quick/Quick: The Swift (and Objective-C) testing framework.

19. IAPHelper

In-app purchases brings us a lot of boilerplate code, which this library get rid of and give us a simple wrapper for most common tasks related to money transfer from iOS user to your (or your company) wallet.

CocoaPods:

pod 'IAPHelper'

saturngod/IAPHelper

20. ReactiveCocoa

OK, here we have a little monster.

ReactiveCocoa isn’t a rather small, drop-in project like the others on this list. ReactiveCocoa brings us a totally different programming style/architecture based on signals and streams of values. It’s totally mind blowing and first you need unlearn what you’ve learned to understand how this work. It’s not an easy task, but rewarding.

This isn’t a proper place to teach you ReactiveCocoa, but I’ll give you good resources if you are interested:

• Getting Started with ReactiveCocoa
• ReactiveCocoa
• ReactiveCocoa Tutorial - The Definitive Introduction: Part 1/2

CocoaPods:

pod 'ReactiveCocoa'

ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa

21. SwiftyJSON

JSON parsing in Swift made easy.

CocoaPods:

pod 'SwiftyJSON'

GitHub - SwiftyJSON/SwiftyJSON: The better way to deal with JSON data in Swift.

22. Spring

Animations made easy, chainable and declarative.

CocoaPods:

pod 'Spring'

GitHub - MengTo/Spring: A library to simplify iOS animations in Swift.

23. FontBlaster

Load custom fonts to your app easily.

CocoaPods:

pod 'FontBlaster'

ArtSabintsev/FontBlaster

24. TAPromotee

Cross promoting your apps is one of the best marketing strategies you can implement in them for free. And with this library it’s so easy that you can’t longer justify not doing it — add TAPromotee to your podfile, configure and enjoy more downloads for free.

CocoaPods:

pod 'TAPromotee'

JanC/TAPromotee

25. Concorde

Do you load a lot of JPEGs in your app? With Concorde you can do it in a bit better looking way. A progressive way.

CocoaPods:

pod 'Concorde'

contentful-labs/Concorde

26. KeychainAccess

Little helper library to manage Keychain access.

CocoaPods:

pod 'KeychainAccess'

kishikawakatsumi/KeychainAccess

27. iOS-charts

And last but not least — the iOS charts library! It’s so useful and beautiful, that I won’t write here too much — just scroll below and see what you can do in your app with this project.

Yes, everything is available as a drop-in (ok, maybe “code-in”) component.

Unfortunately there is no CocoaPods support yet, so you need to manually drag the project to your Xcode workspace.

TL;DR list of all these libraries for quick access:

1. DZNEmptyDataSet [UI, empty table view solver]
2. PDTSimpleCalendar [UI, drop-in calendar component]
3. MagicalRecord [Core Data helper implementing active record pattern]
4. Chameleon [UI, color framework]
5. Alamofire [Swift networking]
6. TextFieldEffects [UI, custom looking text fields]
7. GPUImage [fast image processing]
8. iRate [getting user ratings]
9. GameCenterManager [easily manage Game Center]
10. PKRevealController [UI, slide side menu]
11. SlackTextViewController [UI, highly customizable custom text field]
12. RETableViewManager [create table views dynamically from code]
13. PermissionScope [UI, nicely pre-asking user for system permissions]
14. SVProgressHUD [UI, custom waiting spinner]
15. FontAwesomeKit [easily add Font Awesome to your project]
16. SnapKit [easy auto layout in code]
17. MGSwipeTableCell [UI, swipeable table view cells]
18. Quick [Swift unit testing framework]
19. IAPHelper [In-App Purchases helper wrapper]
20. ReactiveCocoa [FRP framework]
21. SwiftyJSON [Swift JSON library]
22. Spring [Animation framework]
23. FontBlaster [easily load custom fonts into your app]
24. TAPromotee [cross promote your apps with drop-in view]
25. Concorde [download and decode progressive JPEGs]
26. KeychainAccess [manage keychain easily]
27. iOS-charts [beautiful charts library]

Thanks for reading, it was a long list! If you think it was worth creating, please share it by clicking the Share button below the article — more people will benefit from it. Also if you’re a Medium user, please click the Recommend button — it will inspire me to create more iOS development articles!

You can also follow me on Twitter, where I mostly write about iOS development.

Recommended reads:

• 27 places to learn iOS development. Best ones.
• 52 people every iOS developer should follow on Twitter.

27 iOS open source libraries to skyrocket your development. was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Even if you currently don’t know what Swift is.

Originally published and updated for 2022 on the MixCoin DevBlog:

10 Steps to Become an iOS Developer in 2020 💻 * MixCoin Currency

So you want to take a piece of the mobile pie, the hottest tech thing around right now, and learn iOS development? Good decision.

I’m Paweł, an independent iOS developer making iPhone apps and games. Mobile is hot, indisputably, and probably will be for a few incoming years. There are hundreds of unfulfilled job positions wherever you are located. Companies are looking for every level of programmers — interns, juniors, mids, seniors, and experts. This article is for beginners — I will try to help you land your first job as an iOS programmer.

“Why should I listen to you?”,

you will probably say. And it’s a good question — taking bad advice from people who don’t know anything isn’t a good idea.

I’m not a source of unquestionable truth, well, I’m not even a really experienced iOS developer — but I know enough about the market to help you. Also, I ship apps, like my newest one, the MixCoin — Currency Converter for iOS.

MixCoin - iPhone Currency Converter Calculator App

In the iOS development world, I started as an indie, with a few low-income apps, but high enough to allow me to focus on them and don’t worry about food and paying bills (and later buy some cameras and telescopes to pursue my astronomy and astrophotography hobby, and also afterward, to fund some travel trips around Western and Eastern Europe), then I joined a software house company as a junior iOS developer, to finally back to my own apps in Ecler Studios and focus on them entirely without worrying about tomorrow. If I want to, I can always go back and work for someone else (but it’s probably not for me — my entrepreneurial spirit is still strong inside me).

Also, I run my food recipes blog on the side!

Food Recipes - Quick, Easy, and Tasty! * DishCook | Easy Food Recipes Food Blog

OK, but less talk, more action — what do you need to do to become an iOS developer?

1. Buy a Mac (and iPhone — if you don’t have one).

To develop for iOS, you need a Mac.

OK, there are some workarounds for this (like Hackintosh or Mac In Cloud), but let’s be serious here — as an iOS developer, Mac will be your primary working tool. You don’t have to go for the newest, fastest, and most expensive one, but you definitely need some Mac. If you want an excellent entry device, consider Mac Mini — it probably presents the best value for the money you will pay for it. And if you are like me and mobility is your number one priority, get Air — preferably this one with a bigger screen. And you aren’t obligated to buy new stuff, second hand from eBay is just fine.

2. Install Xcode.

When you have your shiny new (cleaned used is very close to the new too) Mac on your desk, it’s time to install the most essential software for iOS developers — Xcode. Xcode is your IDE (integrated development environment) for making iOS apps. It’s free, and you can download it straight from the Mac App Store, which you should do right now.

In Xcode, you do code writing and editing, debugging, “drawing” your app in storyboards, unit testing your app, and many, many other things. You also use Xcode to upload your app to the App Store. Get familiar with it, it’s the most important software for every iOS developer.

3. Learn the basics of programming (probably the hardest point).

Now one of the most challenging steps — you need to jump straight into code. If you have some programming background, picking up Objective-C (harder to learn) or Swift (easier to learn) wouldn’t be complex — they are mostly standard, object-oriented programming languages. But if you haven’t written a single line of code in your life, don’t worry — there are two great resources for true beginners:

1. Ry’s Objective-C tutorial — for “old school” Objective-C fans. You don’t have to truly master Objective-C (Swift is the future <maybe even present>), but it’s good to know the basics and to be able to read the code written in this language.
2. Swift language guide by Apple — this is the Swift language reference you want to use and learn from. Official Apple documentation is excellent as always.

Of course, you don’t have to understand everything in depth — this will come later with experience. But you need to fully immerse yourself into all these variables, pointers, classes, data types, and loops. It will give you context for further learning.

4. Create a few different apps from step-by-step tutorials.

This is the point when you are finally starting to make something useful. Check these sites:

1. AppCoda — is probably the best starting point for beginners. You will find there many different tutorials, step by step, with a lot of descriptions. Definitely go through all of them!
2. Ray Wenderlich — another useful site with a giant database of iOS development tutorials. Learn from it, step by step.

But don’t stop only on these sites and tutorials! Move along and create a calculator app. Then create a weather app. Then a currency converter app. Music app. Did you get the point? Create whatever you find a tutorial for.

Recommended read:

27 places to learn iOS development. Best ones.

Make apps from tutorials until you’ll be fully comfortable in Xcode and the language of your choice (Objective-C or Swift). And when this happens, move on to…

5. Start working on your own custom app.

OK, things are getting serious. At this point, you are starting to make your own custom app that you will show to your future employer during the interview.

But don’t be scared! You don’t have to create a second Facebook. You are starting for a junior position, right? A position, where you are supposed to learn from other employees as much as you can, not to be an expert with 5 years of experience.

So stay calm and think about what areas of iOS development you are currently best on.

Maybe you have created an app that uses networking a lot? Perhaps you have studied UIKit the most and are comfortable creating complex user interfaces? Or maybe you made a music player and audio on iOS is your favorite part of developing? Leverage that interest and knowledge and build your app upon that. Focus on clean, stylish, and working code.

6. In the meantime, learn as much as possible about software development.

If you are reading this, you probably don’t want to go to university for a few years to study computer science. The good news is you don’t have to!

You can learn many computer science/programming/software engineering topics at home or online.

Of course, it won’t replace getting a degree, but to get a job as an iOS developer, you don’t have to have it. See the picture above? Learn about these things written on it. And I won’t give you links now— searching for information is one of the most crucial developer skills. Start training it now. Google is your friend.

7. Finish your app.

After a few days, weeks, or months of learning and working on your app, you should have a working app. This app is your resume — you should put into it your best work. A lot of it. Here’s a list of suggestions of what employers will be looking for in your app:

• working app
• clean code
• code organizing — small classes, well-selected names for variables, nice file grouping inside the Xcode project, etc.
• usage of storyboards (you have a big plus if you can mix both storyboard and code to create a user interface)
• usage of CocoaPods
• some simple unit tests
• use of external libraries (for example, some open source projects from GitHub — it’s a big plus if you can do this because in real-life work, you do this all the time)

Btw if you are looking for some excellent iOS open-source libraries, check out my other post:

27 iOS open source libraries to skyrocket your development.

Of course, everything depends on the company and job you are starting for, but generally, with these skills above in your belt, you can probably start for every junior iOS developer position.

OK, you have your beautiful, shiny app. The next step is…

8. Publish your app to the App Store.

OK, just to be precise — this step can be optional because to do this, you need an iOS developer account, which costs $99 yearly, and there is a big chance that your app won’t break even that cost.

It’s up to you whether you want to or not to have an app in the App Store, but many companies evaluate this as a big plus in your resume.

Having an app in the App Store means that you know how the publishing process works, what Apple’s restrictions (and there are a lot of them!) about apps, and what you need to publish instead of the app itself (description, keywords, screenshots, promo video), etc.

You don’t have to do this, but I strongly recommend it (my apps in the App Store probably landed me my first job).

9. Upload your app to GitHub.

GitHub is a social platform generally used for code sharing (a similar but less popular alternative to GitHub is Bitbucket).

You can upload your app’s code here (and make it public or private), watch other people’s code, and contribute to open-source projects. It’s widely used, and you can benefit from GitHub even if you are a solo-only developer — by better organizing your code and having the best possible backup.

But why should you upload your app here? Well, to show your code to your future employer!

Don’t send your code by email, we are not in the 90s anymore.

10. Contact the company you want to work in!

And this is it — now you are prepared to get your first job as an iOS developer! Intern or junior probably, but it’s not essential — the important thing is now you have the skills to get the first job, and when you achieve this, the rest will take care of itself.

So prepare your resume, find that fantastic company you want to work in, and create apps with them!

If you liked the article and you want more, please click the recommend button below — it will inspire me to share more tips with you (and I have a lot of ideas in my head)! You can also follow me on Twitter, where I tweet mostly about iOS development. Thanks!

• MixCoin - iPhone Currency Converter Calculator App
• Paweł Białecki (@pawel_bialecki) | Twitter

Recommended read:

52 people every iOS developer should follow on Twitter.

10 Steps to Become a Professional iOS Developer was originally published in iOS Insights & iPhone Hacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.