Whats new in ios 13 for developers to look out for

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To get a handle on what’s new in iOS 13 for developers, here are the detailed steps and key areas to focus on: Apple introduced a significant overhaul, bringing a slew of new APIs, enhancements, and a much-anticipated Dark Mode.

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This update was less about flashy new user-facing features and more about empowering developers with tools to create richer, more integrated, and performant applications.

Understanding these changes is crucial for optimizing existing apps and building cutting-edge new ones.

One of the most visually striking additions is Dark Mode, which provides a system-wide dark appearance that’s easy on the eyes, especially in low-light environments. Developers need to ensure their apps respect this setting, providing a consistent user experience. This involves adapting colors, images, and text to ensure readability and aesthetic appeal in both light and dark interfaces. Another major leap forward is in SwiftUI, Apple’s declarative UI framework, which allows developers to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms with less code and more intuitive syntax. This fundamentally changes how UI development can be approached. Furthermore, iOS 13 introduced significant privacy enhancements, giving users more control over their data, including new location privacy options and the “Sign In with Apple” feature, which provides a fast, secure, and privacy-preserving way for users to sign into apps and websites. For an in-depth exploration of SwiftUI, you can check Apple’s official documentation at developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/.

Developers also saw improvements in ARKit 3, bringing features like People Occlusion and Motion Capture, opening up new possibilities for augmented reality experiences. Core ML 3 received updates allowing on-device machine learning models to be more powerful and flexible, supporting more model types and accelerating performance. iPadOS, branching off iOS 13, introduced specific features tailored for the iPad’s larger screen and multi-tasking capabilities, such as multiple windows for a single app and improved text editing gestures. The new Combine framework provides a declarative Swift API for processing values over time, making reactive programming more native to Apple’s ecosystem. Lastly, performance optimizations, including faster app launch times and smaller app download sizes, were also a focus, benefiting both users and developers. It’s imperative to leverage these new APIs and best practices to ensure your applications are modern, performant, and privacy-conscious.

Table of Contents

Embracing Dark Mode: A Visual Transformation

IOS 13 marked a significant aesthetic shift with the introduction of system-wide Dark Mode. This wasn’t just a cosmetic option.

It was a fundamental change in how users interact with their devices, especially in low-light conditions.

For developers, this meant a non-negotiable requirement to adapt their applications to gracefully support both light and dark appearances.

Ignoring Dark Mode could lead to a jarring user experience, impacting app adoption and ratings.

Implementing Dynamic Colors and Images

The core of Dark Mode support lies in using dynamic colors and images that automatically adjust based on the current interface style. Visual testing definitions

  • Semantic Colors: Instead of hardcoding RGB values, Apple introduced semantic colors in UIColor e.g., systemBackground, label, secondaryLabel, etc.. These colors are designed to adapt, ensuring your app’s text and backgrounds remain legible and aesthetically pleasing in both light and dark contexts. For instance, UIColor.label will be dark text on a light background and light text on a dark background.
  • Asset Catalogs: For custom images and colors, asset catalogs now support specifying different versions for light and dark modes. This allows you to provide distinct image assets or color definitions that the system loads automatically based on the user’s preference. This is crucial for branding elements or custom UI components that might look odd when simply inverted.
  • UITraitCollection: Understanding and utilizing UITraitCollection is paramount. This object encapsulates various environmental characteristics, including the userInterfaceStyle property light or dark. You can use this trait collection to conditionally load resources or adjust UI elements programmatically when more fine-grained control is needed. A common pattern is to override traitCollectionDidChange_: in your UIViewController or UIView subclasses to respond to interface style changes.

The adoption rate for Dark Mode was significant.

Within months of its release, many users switched to Dark Mode, with some estimates suggesting over 50% preference among those running iOS 13. This underlines why it wasn’t a niche feature but a mainstream expectation.

Testing and Debugging Dark Mode

Thorough testing across both interface styles is essential to catch any visual inconsistencies or accessibility issues.

  • Simulator and Device: Always test your app on both the iOS Simulator and a physical device. Visual nuances can sometimes differ.
  • Xcode Debugger: Xcode provides tools within the debugger to switch the interface style on the fly, making it easy to see how your UI behaves without needing to navigate to the system settings. This is a massive time-saver during development.
  • Accessibility: Ensure sufficient contrast ratios for text and UI elements in both modes. Tools like Xcode’s Accessibility Inspector can help identify potential issues. Poor contrast can make your app unusable for some users.

SwiftUI: A Declarative Revolution

SwiftUI was arguably the biggest developer-centric announcement at WWDC 2019. It represented a paradigm shift from imperative, UIKit-based UI construction to a declarative, Swift-first approach.

This framework allows developers to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms—iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS—using the same codebase and language. Set proxy in firefox using selenium

Core Concepts of SwiftUI

SwiftUI is built on several fundamental concepts that differ significantly from UIKit.

  • Declarative Syntax: Instead of describing how to build UI e.g., addSubview, setting frames, you describe what the UI should look like for a given state. SwiftUI automatically updates the UI when the state changes.
  • Views as Structs: SwiftUI views are lightweight structs that conform to the View protocol. They are immutable and are rebuilt efficiently by SwiftUI when their dependencies change. This contrasts with UIKit’s reference-type UIView hierarchy.
  • State Management: SwiftUI introduces powerful property wrappers like @State, @Binding, @ObservedObject, @EnvironmentObject, and @Environment to manage data flow and reactivity within your UI.
    • @State: For simple, local value types that cause a view to re-render when they change.
    • @Binding: Creates a two-way connection to a source of truth, allowing a child view to modify a parent’s state.
    • @ObservedObject: For reference types classes conforming to ObservableObject that contain complex application state.
    • @EnvironmentObject: Similar to @ObservedObject but injected into the environment, making it accessible to any descendant view without explicit passing.
  • Composition over Inheritance: SwiftUI encourages composing smaller, focused views to build complex UIs, rather than relying on deep class inheritance hierarchies common in UIKit.

Early adoption data showed a strong interest in SwiftUI, with many developers starting new projects with it.

According to a 2021 survey by Stack Overflow, approximately 12.3% of professional developers were using SwiftUI, a figure that has steadily grown.

Interoperability with UIKit

While SwiftUI is powerful, it doesn’t mean developers have to abandon their existing UIKit codebases. Apple designed SwiftUI to be interoperable.

  • UIHostingController: You can embed SwiftUI views within existing UIKit view controller hierarchies using UIHostingController. This allows for gradual migration or mixing and matching technologies.
  • UIViewRepresentable and UIViewControllerRepresentable: Conversely, you can wrap existing UIView and UIViewController instances to use them within SwiftUI views. This is incredibly useful for incorporating complex UIKit components e.g., UIPageViewController, MKMapView that don’t have direct SwiftUI equivalents yet, or for leveraging custom UIKit views you’ve already built.

This interoperability ensures a smooth transition path, allowing developers to adopt SwiftUI incrementally without rewriting their entire application. Jenkins for test automation

Enhanced Privacy and Security: Sign In with Apple

IOS 13 brought significant enhancements to user privacy and security, reflecting Apple’s continued commitment to this area.

The most notable addition for developers was “Sign In with Apple,” designed to provide a fast, secure, and privacy-friendly way for users to sign into apps and websites.

Sign In with Apple: Core Features

Sign In with Apple offers several compelling features for users and developers.

  • Privacy-Focused: Users can choose to share their real email address or a unique, relay email address generated by Apple <unique-id>@privaterelay.appleid.com. This significantly reduces the risk of spam or unwanted marketing emails.
  • Built-in Security: It leverages Face ID or Touch ID for authentication, providing a secure and convenient login experience. It also offers two-factor authentication by default.
  • Seamless Experience: Users can sign in with a single tap, eliminating the need to create new passwords or fill out long registration forms.
  • Mandatory for Certain Apps: Apple mandated that if an app supports third-party social logins like Facebook or Google, it must also offer Sign In with Apple. This pushed adoption rapidly. As of early 2020, over 75% of apps requiring third-party login had integrated Sign In with Apple, demonstrating its widespread implementation.

Implementing Sign In with Apple

Integrating Sign In with Apple involves both client-side and server-side work.

  • AuthenticationServices Framework: The AuthenticationServices framework specifically ASAuthorizationController is used on the client-side to present the login flow. Developers receive an authorization credential containing user information upon successful authentication.
  • Server-Side Verification: For robust security, it’s crucial to verify the identity token received from Apple on your backend server. This token is a JSON Web Token JWT signed by Apple, ensuring its authenticity and preventing tampering. Apple provides public keys to verify these signatures.
  • User Identifier: Each user gets a unique, stable identifier from Apple. This identifier is consistent across your app and the user’s devices but unique to your developer account. This allows you to link the user’s Apple ID with their account in your system.

Location Privacy Enhancements

Beyond Sign In with Apple, iOS 13 also introduced stricter controls around location data. How to write a bug report

  • One-Time Location Access: Users could grant an app access to their location just once, requiring the app to request permission again the next time it needed location data. This addressed a common user concern about apps continuously tracking their location.
  • Background Location Notifications: Users now receive notifications when an app is using their location in the background, providing transparency and an easy way to revoke permission.
  • Changes to CLLocationManager: Developers had to be mindful of these changes, ensuring they only requested location data when genuinely needed and explaining to users why location access was required. Apps that continuously requested location without clear justification risked being denied permission by users or even being rejected from the App Store.

These privacy enhancements underscore Apple’s commitment to user control and data protection.

Developers who prioritize user privacy tend to build more trusted and successful applications.

iPadOS: A New Frontier for iPad Apps

With iOS 13, Apple officially branched off iPadOS, a dedicated operating system for the iPad.

While largely based on the iOS codebase, iPadOS introduced a host of features specifically designed to leverage the iPad’s larger screen, multi-tasking capabilities, and pro-user aspirations.

For developers, this meant rethinking how their apps functioned on the iPad, moving beyond simply scaling up iPhone interfaces. Jest framework tutorial

Multi-Window Support for Single Apps

One of the most impactful features was the ability to open multiple windows of the same app. This vastly improved productivity for apps like Mail, Notes, or even custom business applications.

  • UIScene and SceneDelegate: This new capability was enabled by the UIScene API, which represented an instance of your app’s UI running on the device. Instead of a single AppDelegate managing the entire app lifecycle, SceneDelegate now manages the lifecycle of individual scenes windows.
  • NSUserActivity: To enable opening specific content in new windows, developers needed to adopt NSUserActivity for state restoration. This allowed users to drag content e.g., an email, a note, a document from one part of the app to create a new window with that specific content.
  • Drag and Drop: Enhanced drag and drop capabilities further complemented multi-window support, allowing users to seamlessly move content between different instances of the same app or even between different apps.

For example, a user could open two instances of a document editing app side-by-side, comparing or referencing content without switching contexts.

This mirrored traditional desktop multi-windowing, making the iPad feel more like a productivity device.

Enhanced Text Editing and Gestures

IPadOS also brought a suite of improvements to text editing, making interaction with text more efficient and natural.

  • New Text Gestures: Users gained new gestures for selecting text three-finger pinch in to copy, pinch out to paste, undo/redo three-finger swipe left/right, and moving the cursor.
  • Floating Keyboard: A new floating keyboard was introduced, allowing users to move and resize the keyboard for single-handed typing or to free up screen space.
  • Font Management: Users could now install custom fonts from the App Store, expanding the typographic possibilities for apps that supported custom fonts. This was a significant step for design and publishing apps.

These enhancements meant developers needed to ensure their text input fields and custom text views correctly responded to these new system gestures and keyboard options, providing a consistent user experience. Html5 browser compatible

Files App and External Drive Support

IPadOS further empowered the Files app, making it more robust and akin to a traditional file system.

  • External Drive Support: iPads could now directly connect to and read from external hard drives, USB drives, and SD cards. This was a must for photographers, videographers, and anyone working with large files.
  • SMB File Sharing: The Files app also gained support for connecting to SMB file servers, allowing users to access shared network drives directly from their iPad.
  • UIDocumentBrowserViewController: For developers building document-based apps, leveraging UIDocumentBrowserViewController became even more critical. This provided a standardized way for users to access and manage documents from various sources, including iCloud Drive, third-party cloud storage providers, and now external drives.

The emphasis on file management and multi-windowing solidified the iPad’s position as a capable computing device for many professional workflows.

Developers who optimized their apps for these iPadOS-specific features stood to gain a significant advantage in the growing iPad market.

ARKit 3 & Core ML 3: Pushing the Boundaries of Intelligence

IOS 13 brought significant advancements in both Augmented Reality ARKit 3 and on-device Machine Learning Core ML 3, empowering developers to create more immersive, intelligent, and responsive applications.

These updates built upon Apple’s existing frameworks, pushing the capabilities of what’s possible on consumer hardware. Role of qa in devops

ARKit 3: Human-Centric Augmented Reality

ARKit 3 focused heavily on enabling AR experiences that deeply understood and interacted with people and their environment.

  • People Occlusion: This was a must. ARKit 3 could now understand the depth of people in a scene, allowing virtual content to appear behind or in front of a person realistically. This made AR experiences far more believable and immersive, moving beyond simple overlays. Imagine an AR game where characters realistically walk behind your friends in the room, or a virtual fashion try-on where clothes appear to be worn by the user.
  • Motion Capture: ARKit 3 gained the ability to track 2D joint positions of a person in real-time, mapping body movements to a 3D skeleton. This opened doors for applications in fitness tracking exercise form, gaming controlling avatars with body movements, and even animation. Developers could use this data to drive virtual characters or analyze human motion.
  • Collaborative Sessions Improvements: Building on ARKit 2’s collaborative experiences, ARKit 3 further refined shared AR experiences, making it easier for multiple users to interact with the same virtual content in a shared physical space.
  • Multiple Face Tracking: For devices with the TrueDepth camera like iPhone X and newer, ARKit 3 allowed for tracking up to three faces simultaneously, useful for multi-person AR mask effects or social AR experiences.

By 2020, ARKit had been used in over 12,000 apps on the App Store, demonstrating widespread adoption and the potential for new categories of applications.

The enhancements in ARKit 3 provided developers with more sophisticated tools to create even more compelling AR experiences.

Core ML 3: Powerful On-Device Machine Learning

Core ML 3 significantly expanded the types of machine learning models that could be run efficiently on Apple devices and provided more flexibility for developers.

  • Increased Model Coverage: Core ML 3 supported a wider range of ONNX and TensorFlow Lite models, making it easier for data scientists and ML engineers to convert and deploy their existing models to iOS devices without extensive re-training.
  • On-Device Training: While not full-fledged model training, Core ML 3 introduced Updatable Models. This allowed models to be fine-tuned or personalized on the device itself based on user interactions, without sending sensitive data to a cloud server. This was crucial for privacy and enabling more adaptive applications. For example, a keyboard app could learn new words specific to a user’s typing habits, or a photo app could learn to better categorize specific types of images the user frequently takes.
  • Higher Performance: Apple continued to optimize Core ML for the Neural Engine in A-series chips, leading to faster inference times and lower power consumption for ML tasks. This allowed developers to integrate more complex models into their apps without degrading performance or battery life.
  • CoreMLTools 3: The accompanying coremltools Python package was updated to support the new features and model types in Core ML 3, simplifying the conversion process for developers.

On-device machine learning is a powerful tool for enhancing user experiences while respecting privacy. Continuous monitoring in devops

Instead of relying on cloud-based AI, which can introduce latency and data privacy concerns, Core ML 3 allowed developers to bring intelligence directly to the user’s device.

This is particularly beneficial for applications dealing with sensitive data, such as health apps, personal organizers, or photo processing tools.

Combine Framework: Reactive Programming in Swift

Alongside SwiftUI, iOS 13 introduced the Combine framework, a declarative Swift API for processing values over time. Combine brings reactive programming primitives natively to Apple’s ecosystem, providing a unified way to handle asynchronous events, data streams, and state changes. For developers familiar with frameworks like RxSwift or ReactiveSwift, Combine offered a similar paradigm but integrated deeply with Apple’s own frameworks.

Understanding Combine’s Core Concepts

Combine is built around three fundamental concepts:

  • Publishers: Publishers are responsible for emitting values over time. These can be asynchronous network requests, user interface events like button taps, timers, or even simple sequences of data. Any type that conforms to the Publisher protocol can emit values. Examples include NotificationCenter.Publisher, URLSession.dataTaskPublisher, or PassthroughSubject for custom publishers.
  • Subscribers: Subscribers consume values emitted by publishers. When a publisher emits a value, its subscribers receive it. The Subscriber protocol defines methods for receiving input, completion, and failure signals. The most common subscriber type developers interact with is sinkreceiveCompletion:receiveValue:, which provides closures to handle incoming values and completion/failure events.
  • Operators: Operators are pure functions that transform, filter, or combine values emitted by publishers. They allow you to chain operations together to create complex data processing pipelines. Examples include map, filter, debounce, throttle, combineLatest, merge, and many more. Operators are crucial for manipulating data streams effectively.

Combine provides a powerful, type-safe way to manage asynchronous operations, making code more readable, less error-prone, and easier to reason about, especially in complex UIs. What is shift left testing

Benefits and Use Cases for Combine

The adoption of reactive programming paradigms has been growing, and Combine offers several compelling benefits.

  • Simplified Asynchronous Code: Combine helps eliminate “callback hell” and nested completion handlers, leading to flatter and more readable code for asynchronous operations.
  • Unified Event Handling: It provides a consistent model for handling various types of events, whether they are network responses, user gestures, or system notifications.
  • Error Handling: Combine’s type system includes error types, making error propagation and handling explicit and safer.
  • Integrated with SwiftUI: Combine is deeply integrated with SwiftUI. For instance, @Published property wrapper part of ObservableObject makes properties observable, automatically creating a publisher that emits values when the property changes. This enables SwiftUI views to react automatically to changes in their underlying data models.
  • Network Requests: Using URLSession.dataTaskPublisher simplifies network requests, allowing you to chain operations for parsing, error handling, and UI updates.
  • User Interface Events: Button taps, text field changes, and other UI events can be exposed as publishers, enabling declarative event handling.

For instance, consider a search bar.

With Combine, you could easily debounce user input wait for a short pause before searching, filter out empty strings, and then trigger a network request, all within a concise, readable chain of operators.

This makes development faster and maintenance easier.

While data specifically on Combine adoption alone is hard to isolate from SwiftUI, the growth of SwiftUI naturally correlates with increased Combine usage, given their symbiotic relationship. Selenium web browser automation

Performance Enhancements and App Store Improvements

iOS 13 wasn’t just about new features.

It also brought significant under-the-hood performance optimizations and changes to the App Store experience designed to benefit both users and developers.

These improvements aimed at making apps faster, smaller, and more efficient, contributing to a smoother overall user experience.

Faster App Launch Times

Apple focused on optimizing the app launch process, leading to noticeable improvements in how quickly applications open.

  • Dynamic Linker Optimizations: Improvements in the dynamic linker dyld reduced the time it takes to load an app’s executable and its associated libraries. This impacts every app on the system.
  • Code Signing Changes: Minor optimizations in the code signing verification process during app launch also contributed to speed gains.
  • Reduced Binary Size: While not directly an iOS 13 feature, Apple continued to push for app thinning and optimized app bundles. Smaller binaries mean less data to load from storage into memory, contributing to faster launches.

These improvements might seem incremental individually, but cumulatively, they create a snappier feel across the entire operating system, which users certainly notice. According to Apple, apps launched up to twice as fast on iOS 13 compared to iOS 12, showcasing the significant impact of these optimizations. Checklist for remote qa testing team

Smaller App Download Sizes

Another major win for users especially those with limited data plans and developers was the reduction in app download sizes.

  • App Slicing and Bitcode: Apple continued to leverage App Slicing providing only the necessary resources for a specific device and Bitcode allowing Apple to re-optimize binaries for future hardware.
  • New Compression Algorithms: iOS 13 likely incorporated improved compression algorithms for app resources, leading to smaller overall package sizes.
  • On-Demand Resources ODR: While not new to iOS 13, Apple continued to advocate for and optimize ODR, allowing developers to host certain app resources on the App Store and download them only when needed, further reducing initial download sizes.

Apple stated that app updates would be up to 60% smaller and initial app downloads up to 50% smaller for apps built with the iOS 13 SDK. This is a massive benefit, leading to quicker downloads, less data consumption, and potentially higher conversion rates for app installs.

App Store Enhancements

Beyond performance, the App Store itself received several refinements impacting how users discover and interact with apps.

  • Arcade and Apple TV+ Integration: While more consumer-facing, the tighter integration of Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ potentially affected app discovery dynamics, as these services gained prominence.
  • Improved Search: Enhancements to App Store search algorithms aimed to provide more relevant results, helping users find apps they needed more easily.
  • Subscription Management: Users gained more granular control over managing their subscriptions directly from their Apple ID settings within the App Store, improving transparency and control.

For developers, these performance and App Store improvements meant that building efficient, well-optimized apps became even more crucial.

Faster launch times and smaller download sizes directly translate to a better user experience and can positively influence app store metrics like retention and conversion. Webdriverio tutorial for selenium automation

Modernizing with Background Tasks and UI Changes

IOS 13 brought significant changes to how apps could perform background work and also introduced several new UI components and capabilities, encouraging developers to adopt modern best practices for responsiveness and user interaction.

Background Task Framework

The traditional methods for background execution, like UIBackgroundFetch and BGTaskScheduler, were refined and expanded.

While not a complete overhaul, iOS 13 solidified the BGTaskScheduler framework introduced in iOS 12, making it the preferred way to schedule deferrable tasks that can run in the background.

  • BGAppRefreshTaskRequest: For tasks like fetching new content e.g., news feeds, email synchronization, this request allows the system to intelligently schedule background refreshes based on network conditions, power state, and user behavior.
  • BGProcessingTaskRequest: For longer-running, more resource-intensive tasks e.g., database clean-up, machine learning model updates, data synchronization, this request provides more execution time and can specify requirements like network connectivity or power connection.
  • Deferrable Execution: The key with BGTaskScheduler is that tasks are deferrable. The system decides the optimal time to run them based on various factors, unlike older methods that might attempt immediate execution. This means developers needed to design their background work to be resilient and idempotent.
  • Debugging Background Tasks: Xcode 11 introduced new debugging tools specifically for background tasks, allowing developers to simulate task launches and expirations, which was a huge improvement over the previous hit-and-miss manual testing.

Reliable background execution is critical for many apps, especially those that need to keep data fresh or perform periodic maintenance.

By moving towards BGTaskScheduler, Apple provided a more robust and energy-efficient way for apps to operate without negatively impacting battery life or user experience. How device browser fragmentation can affect business

New UI Components and API Enhancements

Beyond Dark Mode and SwiftUI, UIKit received several new components and API refinements that empowered developers to create richer user interfaces.

  • UIPointerInteraction iPadOS: On iPadOS, for devices supporting Apple Pencil or external mice/trackpads, UIPointerInteraction allowed developers to customize the pointer’s appearance and behavior as it hovered over UI elements. This brought a desktop-like precision and responsiveness to the iPad experience. For example, a custom button could show a subtle hover effect or change the pointer’s shape when hovered over.
  • UICollectionViewCompositionalLayout: This powerful new layout API for UICollectionView allowed developers to create highly customizable and complex layouts with significantly less code. It enabled building intricate sections and groups within a collection view, from simple grids to complex, irregular layouts, often eliminating the need for custom UICollectionViewLayout subclasses. This streamlined UI development for rich content displays.
  • UIScreen.main.traitCollection changes: The UITraitCollection for the main screen could now change dynamically e.g., when Dark Mode is toggled. Developers needed to ensure their code responded to these changes, especially if they were manually drawing or caching UI elements based on interface style.
  • Context Menus UIContextMenuInteraction: Replacing Peek and Pop 3D Touch, context menus provided a standardized way for users to access secondary actions by long-pressing on UI elements. Developers could easily define menu items and attach them to any UIView, making contextual actions more discoverable and accessible across all iOS 13 devices, not just those with 3D Touch. This provided a consistent user experience for quick actions.

These UI and background task updates encouraged developers to build more responsive, energy-efficient, and user-friendly applications that felt native to the iOS 13 environment.

Adopting these new APIs not only modernizes apps but also ensures they leverage the latest system capabilities for optimal performance and user satisfaction.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the most significant new developer tool introduced in iOS 13?

The most significant new developer tool introduced in iOS 13 was SwiftUI, a declarative UI framework that allows developers to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms using Swift. It represented a paradigm shift in how UI development is approached, emphasizing declarative syntax and state-driven updates.

How did iOS 13 impact app design with Dark Mode?

IOS 13 significantly impacted app design by introducing system-wide Dark Mode. Developers needed to adapt their apps to support both light and dark appearances, primarily by using dynamic colors and images from asset catalogs or by implementing UITraitCollection changes to ensure readability and aesthetic consistency in various lighting conditions. Debug iphone safari on windows

Is SwiftUI compatible with existing UIKit projects?

Yes, SwiftUI is designed to be compatible with existing UIKit projects.

Developers can embed SwiftUI views within UIKit view controller hierarchies using UIHostingController, and conversely, wrap existing UIView and UIViewController instances to use them within SwiftUI views using UIViewRepresentable and UIViewControllerRepresentable.

What privacy features did iOS 13 introduce for developers?

IOS 13 introduced significant privacy features, most notably Sign In with Apple, which provides a secure, privacy-preserving authentication method. It also brought enhanced location privacy controls, such as one-time location access and background location usage notifications, requiring developers to be more transparent about data usage.

What is “Sign In with Apple” and why is it important for developers?

“Sign In with Apple” is Apple’s privacy-focused authentication service allowing users to sign into apps and websites using their Apple ID.

It’s important for developers because it offers enhanced security Face ID/Touch ID, two-factor authentication and user privacy email relay service, and Apple mandated its inclusion if an app supports other third-party social logins. Elements of modern web design

How did iPadOS affect app development for the iPad?

IPadOS, which branched off iOS 13, affected app development for iPad by introducing iPad-specific features like multi-window support for single apps enabled by UIScene and SceneDelegate, enhanced text editing gestures, and direct support for external storage devices in the Files app. This encouraged developers to build more desktop-like, productive experiences tailored for the iPad’s larger screen.

What are the key improvements in ARKit 3?

The key improvements in ARKit 3 included People Occlusion, allowing virtual content to realistically appear behind or in front of people. Motion Capture, enabling real-time tracking of human body movements. improved collaborative sessions. and multiple face tracking for devices with a TrueDepth camera. These advancements opened up new possibilities for immersive AR experiences.

What new capabilities did Core ML 3 bring to on-device machine learning?

Core ML 3 brought new capabilities to on-device machine learning by supporting a wider range of model types e.g., ONNX, TensorFlow Lite, introducing on-device model personalization/training Updatable Models, and delivering higher performance by leveraging the Neural Engine. This allowed for more powerful and privacy-preserving AI features directly on user devices.

What is the Combine framework in iOS 13?

The Combine framework in iOS 13 is a declarative Swift API for processing values over time, bringing reactive programming capabilities natively to Apple’s ecosystem. It provides a unified way to handle asynchronous events, data streams, and state changes using Publishers, Subscribers, and Operators, simplifying complex asynchronous code.

How does Combine relate to SwiftUI?

Combine is deeply integrated with SwiftUI.

SwiftUI leverages Combine for its reactive data flow and state management.

For instance, the @Published property wrapper in SwiftUI’s ObservableObject automatically creates a Combine Publisher, allowing SwiftUI views to automatically react and re-render when the underlying data model changes.

Did iOS 13 bring performance improvements for apps?

Yes, iOS 13 brought significant performance improvements for apps, including faster app launch times up to twice as fast and smaller app download and update sizes up to 50% smaller for initial downloads and 60% for updates. These optimizations benefited both users and developers by making apps feel snappier and consume less data.

What changes were made to background task execution in iOS 13?

In iOS 13, Apple solidified the use of the BGTaskScheduler framework as the preferred method for scheduling deferrable background tasks like BGAppRefreshTaskRequest for content updates and BGProcessingTaskRequest for longer-running tasks. This aimed to make background execution more energy-efficient and reliable, with the system deciding optimal run times.

What is UICollectionViewCompositionalLayout?

UICollectionViewCompositionalLayout is a powerful new layout API introduced in iOS 13 for UICollectionView. It allows developers to create highly customizable and complex collection view layouts by composing smaller groups and sections, significantly reducing the amount of code needed compared to traditional custom layouts.

How do UIContextMenuInteractions work in iOS 13?

UIContextMenuInteractions in iOS 13 replaced 3D Touch’s Peek and Pop functionality, providing a standardized way to display contextual menus when a user long-presses on a UI element.

Developers can easily define menu items and attach them to any UIView, making secondary actions more discoverable and accessible across all devices.

What is the UIScene API and its purpose in iOS 13?

The UIScene API, introduced in iOS 13, represents an instance of your app’s UI running on the device, managed by a SceneDelegate instead of just AppDelegate. Its primary purpose is to enable multi-window support for single apps on iPadOS, allowing multiple instances of the same app to be open simultaneously, each with its own state.

How did font management change in iOS 13 for developers?

In iOS 13, users gained the ability to install custom fonts directly from the App Store.

For developers, this meant that apps could now leverage these user-installed fonts, expanding typographic possibilities, particularly for design, publishing, or productivity applications that benefit from custom typography.

What is UIPointerInteraction and which devices benefit from it?

UIPointerInteraction is an API introduced in iPadOS 13 that allows developers to customize the appearance and behavior of the system pointer cursor as it hovers over UI elements.

Devices supporting Apple Pencil, external mice, or trackpads like newer iPads benefit from this, providing a more desktop-like, precise interaction experience.

What’s new regarding external drive support in iPadOS 13?

IPadOS 13 introduced direct support for external storage devices like USB drives, hard drives, and SD cards via the Files app.

This was a significant enhancement for pro users, enabling them to directly access and manage large files, which required developers of document-based apps to ensure compatibility with UIDocumentBrowserViewController.

How did Apple address developer debugging for background tasks in iOS 13?

Apple addressed developer debugging for background tasks in iOS 13 by integrating new tools within Xcode 11. These tools allowed developers to simulate the launch and expiration of background tasks directly from the Xcode debugger, vastly improving the efficiency and reliability of testing background execution.

Are there any mandates for developers regarding Sign In with Apple?

Yes, Apple mandated that if an app offers third-party social login options like Facebook or Google Sign-in, it must also offer Sign In with Apple as an equivalent option. This pushed widespread adoption and ensured users had a privacy-focused alternative for authentication.

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