amoyi / awesome-apple

An opinionated, curated list of awesome libraries, plugins, and resources for Apple platform development

Awesome-Apple

A list of awesome 3rd party libraries and tools for Apple platform development, iOS and Mac. This is not an exhaustive list, just an opinionated set of resources. I highly recommend you check Github's Objective-C and Swift Trending Page often.

Libraries & Frameworks

iOS UI

• DZNEmptyDataSet Show an special image when no data is available
• JVFloatLabeledTextField Give context to iOS users' text fields
• ClusterPrePermissions Ask for iOS permissions twice
• Tweaks Tweak parameters at runtime in app on iOS
• M13ProgressSuite A wide range of progress indicators for iOS
• SpinKit Several indeterminate loading spinners
• MBProgressHUD For overlaying progress on top of a view controller
• TTTAttributedLabel Better attributed strings in UILabels

Mac UI

• MASPreferences Preferences window for Mac Apps

Images

• FLAnimatedImage Performant GIFs for iOS
• GPUImage GPU based image and video processing for iOS
• FastImageCache iOS library for quickly displaying images while scrolling
• SDWebImage Asynchronous image downloader with cache support for iOS

Animation

• Pop Extensible animation library for iOS and Mac
• JazzHands Key-frame based animation for iOS

Logging

• CocoaLumberjack Better logging for iOS and Mac

Model Programming

• Mantle Simple model layer library for Mac and iOS
• Realm A new mobile-first database

Network Programming

• GCDWebServer HTTP server for iOS and Mac
• CocoaAsyncSocket TCP/IP socket server and consumer for iOS and Mac
• Restkit Transform REST API calls into models (including Core Data) for iOS and OSX
• AFNetworking "The" networking framework for iOS and OSX
• AlamoFire A networking framework for Swift, written by the creator of AFNetworking
• Reachability Reachability class for iOS and OSX

Audio

• AFSoundManager Easier local and streaming audio playback for iOS

Localization

• TTTLocalizedPluralString Much easier pluralization for NSLocalizedString
• InflectorKit Built in pluralization rules for a bunch of languages
• FormatterKit stringWithFormat that localizes different types of data

Programming Helpers

• Dollar.Swift Functional programming helpers for Swift
• ObjectiveSugar Functional programming helpers for iOS
• Reactive Cocoa Functional Reactive Programming for iOS and Mac
• libextobjc Cocoa library to extend Objective-C
• PromiseKit Better asynchronousa programming with Promises for iOS (Obj-C and Swift)
• DateTools Helping out with date and times
• KVOController Block based, easier, safer, KVO
• PureLayout Better programmatic Auto-Layout for iOS and Mac

Testing

• Quick Behavior-Driven Development testing framework for Obj-C and Swift
• Specta Light weight TDD/BDD framework for Obj-C, built on top of XCTest
• Expecta A nice matching framework to make your tests more readable
• OHHTTPStubs Stubs for web request unit testing
• OCMock Mock objects for Objective-C unit testing

Misc

• Sparkle An updating framework for Mac

Xcode Plugins

All plugins should be installed with Alcatraz, the package manager for Xcode.

• FuzzyAutocomplete Fuzzy pattern matching for Xcode's autocomplete
• Lin-Xcode5 Localization Manager for Xcode
• LLDB-Quicklook Quicklook for a variety of additional types
• KFCocoaPodsPlugin Xcode Plugin for CocoaPods with pod commands/console output, user notifications & code completion
• KSImageNamed Xcode Plugin to autocomplete imageNamed: method calls
• VVDocumentor Get help writing documentation in Xcode

Tools & Developer Apps

• Synx Sync project folders to Xcode groups
• Dash A wonderful documentation app for the Mac with integration everywhere
• CoocaPods A fantastic dependancy management system for iOS and Mac
• Crashlytics Crash reporting and beta testing for iOS and Mac (and others)

Websites and Resources

• NSHipster NSHipster is a journal of the overlooked bits in Objective-C, Swift, and Cocoa Updated weekly.
• ObjC.io A periodical about best practices and advanced techniques in Objective-C
• Ray Wenderlich Programming Tutorials focused on iOS
• inessential Brent Simmons' blog (Programmer for Q Branch)
• mjtsai Michael Tsai's blog
• NSBlog Mike Ash's blog
• Cocoa Blog brought to you by the iOS developers at Tumblr
• Cocoa Controls iOS UI controls
• Pttrns iOS design inspiration

For more awesome lists, check out awesome-awesomeness.

If you think anything essential is missing (should be relevant for most or all Apple platform developers) leave me an issue, and I'll take a look.