Top 10 Open-Source iOS Libraries: An All-Inclusive Guide

In the race for the best and most reliable application attracting more customers is the key to accomplishing your business goals. Substantially businesses have to determine mobile app development solutions. Building your business application makes a win-win situation to expand your global customer base. It’s evident that today, smartphones are used not only for making phone calls but also for sending and receiving emails, chatting, sharing media, interacting overseas, shopping, ordering food items, and virtually everything one can even dream of. 

At present, developers are constantly creating amazing applications for various domains loaded with relevant features that help make individuals’ lives quite simple. Nowadays, the demand for iOS applications is at its peak as a result developers utilize top iOS libraries for advanced features of applications. 

However, it is perhaps known to you that iOS application development is rather a herculean task. Fortunately, developers find third-party libraries, which help to save a substantial amount of effort and time.

Integrating the below-mentioned best open-source iOS libraries into your client’s project makes decreases the turnaround time of developers. 

What are Open-Source Libraries & their Importance?

Open-source libraries are basically software libraries that are publicly accessible pre-written code. An individual can easily see, adjust and share these source codes freely. It implies the concept of making the source code reliable and reusable for developers to utilize in their app development projects. 

However, you simply need to have an open-source license declaration for each file used by you from this library. The majority of the best open-source library applications use GNU General Public License and are obtainable with a web interface.  

During the last few years, the open-source application has almost doubled and is providing great possibilities for app developers and businesses. It has a remarkable impact on the functionality of the application. Libraries involve a range of modules that can quickly perform predefined tasks and in turn, saves the time and effort of the developers. It simply refrains developers from writing down the code from scratch.   

Nowadays, the demand and usability of iOS have enhanced with new versions. There are some of the best iOS open-source libraries that can be quite rewarding. Ultimately, you can have top open-source iOS libraries for mobile applications, and these will assist in creating iOS performance-rich applications.

Worthwhile Advantages of Open-Source Libraries

There is no point in building something from scratch when you can use open-source libraries to build your application faster than usual. Having iOS shortcut libraries that assist developers in the app development process. 

During the last several years, open-source code has turned out to be the driving force for alterations. The majority of companies have opted for open source mainly because of its quality, compatibility, reliability, teamwork, and efficiency. Below, we have discussed the benefits in brief.

• Reduced software expenses

Since open-source solutions will need no licensing fee, it provides a reduced total expense of ownership compared to conventional library systems. No cost will be linked with open-source. The only spending that will be made will be either for documentation, support, or media.

• Reliability and quality

The simplicity of technicality happens to be the main reason why iOS app development services and companies prefer open-source libraries at present. According to research, open-source code helps to improve functionality with eye-catching designs and pushes excellence when it comes to coding.

Open-source libraries or applications are created by numerous skilled web and application developers where every single user has access to the debugging tools and the source code. An individual can explore, fix bugs, provide possible alterations, and also expand the functional set.

• Innovation and adaptability

The term innovation is also known as open-source libraries or iOS shortcut libraries in iOS development. You need not wait for the subsequent release or update, instead, you will be able to develop and launch the required features. Anybody interested will be free to include new features or functions in their application development projects.

Open-source libraries allow you to adapt code as per your specific requirements easily. Moreover, the potency to adjust and customization makes the open-source library a preferred choice for everybody.

• Security and flexibility

Flexibility is one more reason for using open-source software. The available codes aren’t associated with any particular developer and provide an extensive range of capabilities.

An open-source application license offers users the freedom to choose functions according to their requirements by simply altering the source code. Apart from this, the process of peer view assures liability and security.

• Community and cooperation

Since it is similar to an open podium where nobody will judge you, open-source libraries are known to encourage cooperation, communication, and collaboration between the professionals out there which helps in the accomplishment of valuable projects.

The top-rated and best IOS open-source libraries are used and supported by groups and online forums where like-minded experts share their expertise.

Apart from this, the companies benefit while receiving increased attention to their applications. They likewise keep working and try to make their products more reliable and better.

The top iOS libraries which are broadly used, happen to be developer-friendly since these are compatible with virtually any situation and provide an affordable solution. Now, it is all about lacing these libraries together for developing the end product.

Top 10 Open-Source iOS Libraries in 2023 & Beyond 

1) Alamofire

Being a successor of AFNetworking, Alamofire has been written in Swift. This particular HTTP networking library for MacOS X and iOS offers an interface to HTTP network requests. URLSessionTask and URLSession happen to be at the heart of the system. 

Alamofire wraps these APIs in a simple interface that provides several features for contemporary application development using HTTP networking. You can easily depend on this library when it comes to downloading, updating, getting JSON, and so on.

2) AFNetworking

This is an Objective-C networking library for macOS, iOS, and tvOS. This robust library has been around for quite some time. AFNetworking has it all, from basic networking to innovative features like SSL Pinning and Network Reachability. It happens to be one of the most in-demand iOS libraries out there, with more than 50 million downloads.

3) SDWebImage

This happens to be an asynchronous image downloader along with caching. It comes with useful UIKit categories for performing stuff like setting a UIImageView image to a URL. Although networking has become somewhat easier over the years in Cocoa. Still, the fundamental job of setting an image view to an image by making use of a URL has not improved to a great extent. Therefore, SDWebImage helps to make things a lot simpler, and for this reason, it has become quite popular amongst iOS application developers.

4) RxSwift

This one happens to be Rx’s Swift version for Functional Reactive Programming. RxSwift is one of the most used iOS libraries and is expressed using an observable element interface. It allows effortless composition of data streams and asynchronous operations similar to the original Rx manner. 

Must Read: Why Startups Choose Swift UI for iOS App Development? 

5) Realm

Realm is an alluring cross-platform substitute for Core Data in terms of persistence. Unlike Core Data, it is much simpler and faster to work with, and you will also get a data browser for exploring Realm database files. The good thing is that this well-known iOS library launched a platform recently for syncing data between applications in real time.

6) Kingfisher

This one happens to be the powerful iOS library for downloading plus caching images from the Internet that have been written in Swift. Kingfisher features extensions for UIImageView, NSButton, NSImageView, and UIButton, and this helps to make it more attractive and useful. 

However, some additional options are provided by the lightweight library, like showcasing placeholder images at the time of downloading, system indicators, built-in updating transitions, and extensible image formatting. You can go for Kingfisher in case you are dealing with remote images. 

7) SwiftyJSON

This iOS library is going to improve your life while dealing with JSON in Swift. It can be tricky to parse JSON with Swift because of typecasting problems that make it tough to deserialize a model object, and it might need several nested if statements. SwiftyJSON helps to make it quite simple to do. It is likewise the second-most well-known Swift library.

8) Chameleon

Created originally by Vic Alexander, this one is a powerful, lightweight, and color framework for iOS (Swift and Objective-C). Its sole intention will be to make the apps work seamlessly while maintaining their contemporary and attractive interfaces.

For delivering responsive design regarding RGB values, Chameleon will help in possibly reducing the time wasted in adjusting and figuring out the proper color combination. Thus, for creating a top-notch app quickly, adding Chameleon to your arsenal hits the mark efficiently. 

9) Reactive Cocoa

The Reactive Cocoa is recognized to be an Objective-C framework that has been encouraged by reactive functional programming and intends to offer more flow-based and precise code. This library is referred to as Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) since it combines several programming styles.

FRP enables you to ensure that alterations made in one portion of the application are reflected automatically to the entire app. However, Reactive Cocoa comes with several built-in functions that allow you to change the signal. Even though it is not a simple task to use this iOS library, there is no doubt that it is rewarding.

10) Lottie

This library will help you to save a significant amount of time effectively. It is a fact that animations aid in enhancing user experience by appealing to the audience and also promoting the brand intuitively and interactively. 

Creating animations by using CoreGraphics and UIView is not an easy task for the developers, but Lottie makes life easy for them in the long run. It includes a toolbox for incorporating the creations of the designer into an application.

Extra Perks for Your iOS Application 

• Snapkit

The top 10 Open-Source iOS Libraries list is getting longer with 2 improved iOS development solutions i.e., Snapkit & SVProgressHUD. Talking about Snapkit is an adaptive and prevalent open-source Swift software library majorly used for iOS app and macOS development. It is an amazing lightweight library that assists in developing Auto Layout constraints in iOS applications. Moreover, it provides DSL (Domain Specific Language) that allows developers to simply get the edge in defining constraints through concise and readable syntax. 

For the complicated process of creating and handling constraints, Snapkit makes it quite easier to develop responsive and versatile user interfaces. It brings up the capacity of managing the constraint seamlessly. Therefore, developers get accessibility to build constraints in regard to other views or super views. Your iOS application will be free from bugs or errors and gain the empowerment to provide easy-to-read APIs. 

• SVProgressHUD

SVProgressHUD is among the straightforward and widely known iOS libraries. The reason behind adding SVProgressHUD to the list is its convenience and flexibility to meet the UIKit. Normally, SVProgressHUD offers you a clean and user-friendly HUD to showcase the overall progress of ongoing tasks on iOS. Additionally, it also makes you customize HUD with in-built indicators and text. 

So, SVProgressHUD is the ultimate game-changer for iOS and tvOS. Its quickly accessible API makes it better than MBProgressHUD, however, its images in making singleton. It permits you to call for show and hide while utilizing it. 

Also Read: iOS App Store Submission Checklist 2020

Why is Rlogical Techsoft considered to be the best iOS app development company?

With our top open-source iOS libraries for app development, your app can easily scale in the market and makes you capture a wider audience. 

You can hire iOS app developers from Rlogical Techsoft and make your application the ultimate best solution. Our company provides experienced and competent developers who will take your project to the next level. 

We know and are equipped with the latest technology and updates iOS libraries regarding the development of iOS apps. Moreover, our experts have an edge in delivering projects flawlessly based on your requirements. Your search for the right iOS app developers ends here. Connect with us and accelerate your development process swiftly.