Best iOS hacks from Twitter: December Edition

Have you missed a fresh edition of iOS tips from Twitter?

Learn how to improve build time, use a private API within Swift Playgrounds and explore all sort of Xcode productivity hacks (so you will hate Xcode a bit less). Hope, you will find here some gems that you didn’t notice last month.

Twitter tip #1
If you don’t know the exact build time of your project, enable the following option in Xcode. At least you’ll see how long you have to procrastinate until the build will be ready.

Twitter tip #2
Don’t want to procrastinate?
Here is how to improve your Swift build time with a simple internal Xcode 9.2 property. Obviously, not a silver bullet but worth a try:

Twitter tip #3
Maybe you have already heard about it, but still :) With Xcode 9 first release many of us were excited about ability to launch iOS simulator and Xcode in full-screen mode. You actually don’t have to create an AppleInternal folder to launch it. You can just execute the following command in the terminal:

defaults write http://com.apple.iphonesimulator AllowFullscreenMode -bool YES

Twitter tip #4
If you hate descriptive names of properties in Info.plist, this Xcode option will come handy:

Twitter tip #5
You can use subscript segments with key paths in Swift 4.0.3. It’s a crucial improvement for using key paths with collections:

Twitter tip #6
Since iOS 11 you won’t get interactive view controller transitions animation if you are not using UITableViewController, where it is implemented for you. Here is a neat code snippet that helps you get the same animation for table view row deselection without UITableViewController:

Twitter tip #7
Simple yet powerful rule to keep your view controller clean and tidy. Naming is the key!

Twitter tip #8
Nice comparison of two different code structures: result-oriented and input-oriented. The result-oriented approach looks definitely much maintainable. Worth a try!

Twitter tip #9
Did you know that enums even with custom String raw values will still use for string interpolation an original name of the enum for string interpolation?Must-know for JSON parsing/creating:

Twitter tip #10
A small tip for apps, which need to work with measurement of Electric, Frequency, Energy, etc. units. Foundation already has classes that represent them all:

Twitter tip #11
Wow! You can use a private API within Swift Playgrounds pretty easily:

Bundle(path: “path to private framework”)?.load() // to load private framework
let ClassName = NSClassFromString(“class name”) // to get required class
var variable = ClassName.init() // to initialize variable
variable.perform(NSSelectorFromString(“selector name”) with:<arguments>) // to execute method

Thanks, Guilherme!

Twitter tip #12
If you intensely use git in Terminal this option may simplify your life a bit while reviewing diffs:

Twitter tip #13
Kristina Thai got all the community’s gems for her future talk! Check out this thread & comments and learn all sort of Xcode tricks to improve your productivity:

and my favourite comments in the thread:

Twitter tip #14
Not the development tip :) But wow, you can remove the shadow from a single window screenshot by just holding the Option key. Magic!

Twitter tip #15
And the moment of wisdom:

Twitter fun
After such a serious tweet from Joe, I just have to post something funny. How about these pure nerdy humour:

Many thanks to all the community for these useful and funny tweets.
Let’s spread even more knowledge in 2018 :) So, please tweet me your favourite iOS tips & trick & jokes from January and hope to see you next month.

P.S.: Maybe you know, that I’m a startup founder and we’re working hard to push Flawless App forward. If you have some time to support our tool for visual quality check, please give us your honest feedback. The more feedback we get, the more we can improve Flawless App. Thanks :)