Top 5 iOS Libraries — July 2017

Hot iOS libraries and some open source repositories to try out.

Last month was special for all iOS developers. With iOS 11, Xcode 9 and Swift 4, there’s a lot of amazing new stuff coming our way! So, this month we bring you something a little bit different: instead of just libraries, we are also giving you a selection of open source repositories that show you how to use those amazing technologies that Apple revealed the previous month! This is sure to freshen up your hot summer days!

This is a collection of no less than 7 open source projects, all showing usage examples of the new APIs and technologies released at WWDC. Seems like a great way to dip your toe into machine learning, augmented reality or some of the other cool new stuff!

Speaking of augmented reality, Apple released ARKit, and it’s the most realistic looking AR you can make on a mobile device.

This open source repository shows you how to paint in AR! This is boatloads of fun to play around with, and surprisingly easy to get into!

Okay, time for some libaries.

One of the hardest things with animations is getting them to look and feel natural. We are used to the physical world and how objects behave inside it. This is why animations that have “weight”, in other words, that take time and effort to start and stop look more natural.

YapAnimator is a physics-based animation system, which means it has things that make animations feel natural, like inertia and springs, built-in and enabled by default. It helps you create more natural animations, with less code.

TinyCrayon is a free to use (but ad supported) SDK which lets you add image masking functionality to your iOS app. Your users can take a photo, and then cut out a part of that photo to, for instance, make the background grayscale, or create a “bokeh” effect, the possibilites are endless! It’s fast and easy to use, with great documentation and examples in the repo.

With Apple Music, Overcast, Facebook and a bunch of other apps, it seems like swipeable card layouts are the new thing in iOS! They are great for screens that should always be accessed, like a “now playing” screen in a music app.

DeckTransition is a UI library which manages sliding and animating a card layout. It’s responsive, performant and looks great!