Why your iOS apps keep crashing

I remember putting my first application on TestFlight, having high hopes that everything would work perfectly or at-least close to perfect cause everything seemed to work fine from the simulator — I was wrong. I didn’t even get to the splash screen before the app forced closed itself.

This is what I basically check for before uploading any app to iTunesConnect.

1. Build configuration
2. Un-wrapping optionals
3. Error handling

Build Configuration

Frustrated and confused, I thought the problem was probably the iPhone I was using but the result was the same with other models.

I checked through the logs, and there it was — an ‘optimization’ error. By default, we’re always running applications in ‘debug’ mode. Therefore, we’re unable to see the result of what the app would work like in ‘release’ mode.

To enable that, click on Product > Scheme > Edit Scheme > then select ‘release’ from the Build Configuration drop down menu.

Now you’ll run your app as if it were in production mode.

Un-wrapping optionals

Another major problem is how I was unwrapping a lot while coding in Swift.

Most times the data that I’m unwrapping for comes from a server and if something happened such as a network error or a change in the database, the value would be nil and the app would quit from that point.

example of un-warpping

This is where ‘if let’ or ‘guard statements’ are useful. If the value is nil, it would return either nothing or an alternative you provide.

example of a guard statement

Error handling

One last thing I observe a lot before creating a prototype is for incomplete features that will in one way or another make the app misbehave. I usually set iOS alerts to tell my Beta users that the feature is still in-development.

That’s it! My quick list of 3 factors to check for 😄 Thanks for reading!