Best 5 iOS app development tools for developers in 2021

by Rob Stephen getaprogrammer

The availability of so many iOS app development tools have made things easier and effortless for the developers now. Here are the best 5 tools iOS app developers must use in 2021.

When it comes to mobile applications and smartphones, Apple or iOS stands out to be the most favoured and preferred choice now. And it’s because of the smooth interface, excellent security, and high-end features of Apple gadgets. With the increasing popularity of Apple devices and with more users switching to iOS devices, having an iOS application has become imperative for businesses too. However, with the increasing use and demand for iOS devices and with more and more businesses going for iOS application development, it won’t be that easy to stand above on the Apple App Store today. Developing an Apple application can be a challenging task for the developers. However, the available iOS application development tools ensure to make things simpler and faster to a great extent now. But it is important for the developers to have a solid understanding of these tools and pick and use the right and the latest ones as per the project needs.

Here are the best 5 iOS app development tools compiled for developers. Take a look.

Using these iOS application development tools can help developers achieve the desired results easily. These tools enable full-fledged app development for Apple devices. Overall, the entire application development process gets simpler, faster, and efficient with the use of these tools. Also, these tools come with different templates, IDEs, data synchronisation, APIs, and analytics. Additionally, these help in simplifying the back-end and integration processes, offer a visual app development environment, and offer support in designing, developing, deploying, debugging, and testing the iOS applications as well. Now, let’s check out the top 5 tools here.

AppCode:

AppCode is an Integrated Development Environment or IDE for iOS application development. This IDE allows developers to build applications using programming languages like Objective-C, Swift, C++, and C. With this tool, it becomes easy for the iOS app developers to automate tasks like identifying, locating, and then fixing errors. It is one of the smartest IDEs that simplifies various code management tasks as well, saving more time and reducing efforts for the developers. It is built on the IntelliJ IDEA platform and is used by either writing its own plugins or by installing plugins as per the requirements. Some of its features are: -

Assists in writing clean codes.
Comes with in-built tools and offers easy integrations for quick and proper running, debugging, and testing of the applications.
Supports other languages as well like XML, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

XCode:

Xcode is the official IDE or Integrated Development Environment of Apple that helps to build applications for all iOS devices including iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. This is the best choice for developing iOS applications as it also helps to easily publish the apps on the iOS App Store. This tool has a text editor, a build system, and a compiler that makes it easy for the developers to compile, write, and debug the codes and then publish them as well. Some of its features are: -

It helps to get the complete documentation for finding anything within ‘Help’.
It helps to design the UI of the applications without writing innumerable lines of code.

Simulator:

Developers must use the Simulator for prototyping and testing the applications during the development process only. It can be considered as a part of the XCode installed tools, which run on the Mac and simulate iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple Tv environments. The simulation environment is a combination of a software version and a simulated device. Some highlighted features of Simulator are:

It smoothes interaction with the applications no matter the applications are running on tvOS, watchOS, iPhone, or any other iOS device.
Helps to debug and prototype the applications.
Makes it easy to optimise the graphics on the application interface.
Helps developers to easily test the applications before releasing them on the Apple App Store.

Transporter:

This tool helps to easily and quickly upload the app content directly on Apple. You can easily distribute the content on the Apple App Store, Apple Music, iTunes Store, Apple Books, etc., with this tool. In fact, you can also send music, movies, TV shows, and more on various Apple platforms using the transporter. However, all you need to do is have an Apple App Store Connector, an encoding house account, or iTunes Connect for this. Some features of this tool are:

Drag and drop content into the tool.
Check the delivery progress and delivery logs quickly.
Helps to get the history of the past deliveries along with their dates and times.
Makes it easy to upload multiple files at a time to streamline the entire delivery process.

CocoaPods:

CocoaPods can be used for easily integrating third-party libraries and it has more than 83,000 libraries. More than 3 million iOS applications use this tool today. CocoaPods also helps to fetch the source codes and resolve dependencies between the libraries.

Hope, now you are aware of the top 5 iOS app development tools and can easily choose the right ones that perfectly fit your project needs.

Rob Stephen is a highly skilled and proficient iOS application developer associated with an award-winning iOS app development company in Australia, GetAProgrammer. The author has written this to let you know about the top 5 tools for efficient and seamless iOS application development in 2021.