iOS 15 — What changed for developers

In June 2021 Apple introduced us to to the new iOS 15, this brand new operating system comes with an arsenal of new features and options for developers.
With that Apple also introduced the new Swift 5.5 version which gives us the developers new tools, features, and more.
In the following article I will cover some of the new features Apple gave us with the new iOS 15:

1. Localization has improved!

If you ever developed an app and as part of it required to translate it into many languages you can say it was not an easy task to do and even harder to maintain.
As part of Xcode 13 and iOS 15, Apple gave the localization a bit of a ZING! improved the UI and for me, it seems they went the Android Studio way.
While under “build settings” be sure to enable “Use Compiler to Extract Swift Strings”

You then need to go Product -> Export Localizations, from there you’ll get the following new UI:

2. Async and Await

With Swift 5.5 Apple introduced a new way to make an asynchronous call, allowing developers a new easier more elegant way to make complex calls, the look and feel of the new method almost feels synchronous.
Let’s see an example:

As we can see in the following code snippet we need to add the async keyword to the function declaration, for each async operation we need to add the new await keyword.
Async and await will be available with the next Xcode version and will be backward compatible all the way back to iOS 13.

3. Stackview changes

With Xcode 13, while creating layouts and using StackView widget, there’s a big improvement that Apple introduced to it, how you layout the StackView's content.
The default behavior of StackView, the distribution is different than in iOS 14 (and earlier versions), Apple actually listened to the developers on this and changed the compression resistance, which now spreads the views in the StackView more evenly height-wise.

4. Notifications handling

A major change Apple introduced in iOS 15 is the new Focus mode.
The new Focus mode can set which apps or people can send notifications, a user can set which notifications to get when Focus mode is on.
Even though this feature can be customized, Apple made a smart choice of apps and people for each Focus mode.
Apple even gave the user the choice to show only specific pages from the home screen to prevent distractions.
Apple added to the UserNotifications enum which handles interruptions levels new modes:

• Time-sensitive (new mode) — allows apps not in your allowed list to send notifications marked as Time Sensitive.
• Critical — This interruption level requires an approved entitlement. The system always presents this notification, even when Do Not Disturb is active. If your app doesn’t assign a sound to this notification, the system uses the default critical alert sound.
• Active — This is the default notification interruption level if, for example, a user is in Do Not Disturb mode he won't be getting these types of notifications. Should use for notifications that do not need immediate user attention.
• Passive (new mode)— The system adds the notification to the notification list without lighting up the screen or playing a sound.

5. Appstore — in-app events

With iOS 15 Apple added a new feature to the AppStore.
In-app events are events you set at a certain time such as game competitions, movie premieres, and live streamed experiences, users who access your app page on the AppStore can see events that happen in your app from the page itself.
Apple gave a new showcase to present those in-app events, this is a new way to reach new users or even return old users.

6. Enhanced Product Pages

Later this year Apple will give developers the ability to publish 35 products pages at the same time, each page can have different: icons, texts, screenshots, and app previews, developers will be able to compare the different product pages performances and see which gives the most impact.

Conclusion

With iOS 15 Apple introduced developers with a bag full of new tricks, the ability to compare the performance of your product pages was something I was looking forward to for a long time (had the ability on Google Play store for a long time).
The new async-await will give us better, more maintainable, and clean code writing.
If you like to read more about the iOS 15 changes feel free to check Apple’s full release notes here.