27 places to learn iOS development. Best ones.
And not only for beginners.
So you have decided that you want to learn iOS development, but you have no idea where to start?
I’ve been at this point too.
Make a coffee, sit down and relax — this post is exactly what you need to start your adventure into iOS programming.
Hi, I’m Paweł, an independent iOS developer making iPhone apps.
Let’s face it — in the Internet you can find anything. Anyone can write, anyone can publish. This makes us some inconvinience— sometimes it’s hard to find really valueable, error-free content.
And this is why I’ve created this list. Below you will find 27 hand-selected websites that provide truly quality content for people who want to learn iOS development — from scratch mostly, but intermediate and advanced devs will find something for them too.
Less talk, more action. The first and the best place to learn iOS development is…
1. Apple documentation — Swift Overview
Official Apple documentation has always outstanding quality — no difference here. If you are newbie who wants to become an iOS developer, here you will find a great introduction to the programming language used in iOS programming — Swift. Also you will get familiar with accompanied tools — Xcode, Playgrounds and REPL.
If you had to choose only one learning resource from this post, pick this — and dive into a massive, official Swift documentation provided by Apple.
2. Ry’s Objective-C Tutorial
If you want to learn Objective-C (and as an iOS developer you should know at least basics), this is the best place to do it.
It covers some pre-Objective-C required knowledge (basics of C), friendly introduction to the iOS programming as a whole (frameworks, philosophy, Xcode etc) and to the language itself — functions, classes, properties, methods, protocols, blocks, memory management and many, many more.
Even if don’t want to learn Objective-C and go 100% the Swift way, learn this short course — it’s a very good starting point and knowing these topics should be enough for a Swift developer to not drown in the Objective-C sea.
3. Stanford iTunes video course
Prefer video content over text? Check Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift by Stanford University — it totally rocks!
Paul Hegarty will tour you from the beginning — iOS overview, basics of Xcode, MVC pattern and Swift — to advanced topics — protocols, segues, Core Location, camera, internationalization and many more. He’s a brilliant teacher and Stanford is a great university publishing this content for free for everyone. Definitely watch this course.
Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift by Stanford.
4. AppCoda
This is by far my favorite site with step-by-step iOS programming tutorials. You will find there guides for many topics — making Apple Watch apps, notifications, widgets, language tips and tricks, In-App Purchases, Core Data basics and many, many more. All of this shown step by step using understanable language, ideal for beginners.
I’ve learnt a ton of knowledge from this site and 8500 fans on Facebook cannot be wrong.
5. Ray Wenderlich
A classic one! It’s probably the most known tutorial site in the iOS developers community and I know why — because it’s great. It’s bigger than AppCoda and has more authors, more content and use more Internet memes in it’s articles!
If you want to invest in yourself, then be sure to check out their premium videos and eBooks — they are definitely worth recommending too.
6. NSScreencast
Do you like weekly-delivered medium-sized portions of video content and by the way you want to learn some iOS development? Then I got something for you — it’s NSScreencast! It costs a few dollars per month (there are some free videos too, but not too many), so calculate if it’s worth your money.
7. Cocoa Dev Central
This site can be a little outdated and I’m not sure if there is someone still working on it, but some topics aren’t changing too often — and one of that topics is Objective-C. If you want to learn this language, you’ll find there really great tutorials for it (just be careful — Objective-C was/is evolving too).
8. NSHipster
Amazing place for in-depth learning specific Cocoa topics. Want to know about method swizzling, Swift literal convertibles, NSFileManager, iCloud or Clang diagnostics? Go and read all the archives, this is the site for you.
9. Coding Explorer
GREAT blog for learning iOS development, especially Swift — you will be learning together with the author, as he’s currently learning too. Blog is new and updated regularly, definitely add it to your RSS reader. A ton of interesting topics around Swift.
10. iOS Dev Weekly
Weekly newletter (probably the most popular one) about iOS development — hot news, dev tutorials, tools, design and marketing articles — everything that every iOS programmer needs. 200th issue went live last Friday and it seems that nothing can stop it! Just subscribe.
11. objc
Objc is a monthly periodical about best practices and advanced techniques for iOS and OS X development. Every issue is focused on a one, specific topic like audio, Swift or Core Data. It’s probably not a good fit for true beginners, but if you already know the basics of iOS development, go there and learn some intermediate and advanced topics too.
12. Cocoa Is My Girlfriend
One of the best iOS programming blogs on the Internet. The author is a truly passionate developer and a really good teacher — this combination makes his blog a very, very good resource for new developers.
13. A Better Way to Learn Swift
If you want to learn Swift from scratch and also you like structured, step by step tutorials with progress tracking — here you have one. You will walk through the full Swift course — from basic syntax and variables to closures, enums, classes, initializers and functional programming concepts. Pair this course up with the official Apple docs and you’ll become an advanced Swift programmer very fast.
14. iCode blog
A place where you will find more advanced tutorials, but not only them— there is a room for beginners too.
15. ManiacDev
ManiacDev is a very well known website in the iOS developers community. It provides not only tutorials and courses, but also links to the new open source libraries, tools or UI controls. It’s updated very often and with very good content. Add to your RSS reader.
16. Tutorials Point
Tutorials Point provides iOS programming tutorials broken into single, specific categories like camera management, accelerometer, location handling or storyboards. It’s good if you want to learn some specific programming niche.
17. Natasha The Robot
Natasha writes mostly on Swift and WatchKit — and if you are interested in these topics (who wouldn’t?), you should read her blog.
18. Tuts+
Tuts+ is a great place for beginners, not only because of the easy to read tutorials, but also because of selected topics. They cover real basics of iOS development — creating first app, first steps into Foundation and UIKit, how table view works and many, many more.
19. Code School
If you don’t mind paying for learning, here you have a nice video course — good for leveling from beginner to intermediate.
20. Udemy
Another paid course, but this is focused strictly on Swift. 13 hours of content divided into 194 lessons will teach you A LOT about the iOS programming language of choice.
21. NSCookbook
NSCookbook provides recipies for solving some concrete problems for iOS developers. Want to know how to skin a UIButton? Maybe you want to know how to use property lists? Or maybe you want to know how to use blocks (hello Objective-C) in real life situations? Say hello to NSCookbook, your best new friend.
22. iOS-Blog
Another great iOS programming blog covering subjects like Swift, integration of external libraries, sending emails, asynchronous programming and many more. Definitely check it out, especially if you are a fan of beautiful, flat graphic design.
23. Bloc — Build your first iOS game
Interested in game programming on iOS? Bloc provides a free tutorial on creating 2D puzzle game in SpriteKit, Apple’s 2D game engine/framework. Build a Tetris clone, step by step. Recommended.
24. Use Your Loaf
Great programming blog run by an iOS, Mac and Ruby on Rails developer. How to create a CocoaPod, how to read QR codes, how to write effective Objective-C 2.0 and more. A lot of practical, real-life examples.
25. Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow isn’t a blog or website with tutorials like majority of the sites above. Stack Overflow is a Q&A (questions and answers) community focused on programming in general, not only on iOS.
On Stack Overflow you can ask your questions and get great answers, you can comment and help other people with their code, you can also just browse some code snippets and solutions for popular programming problems.
Really recommended site, especially if you have a specific problem for which you cannot find some kind of tutorial or how-to guide.
26. GitHub
GitHub is a social platform for developers focused on code sharing and programming together with other developers. On GitHub you can create your repositories (public or private ones), share them and watch other dev’s repos. This is one of the best way to learn fast — see what other programmers do, read their code and inhale good practicies from them.
Btw if you are looking for some great open source iOS libraries on GitHub, check out my other post about them.
27. ASCIIwwdc
And for the end I have some very special for you. ASCIIwwdc is a searchable database of full-text transcripts from all Apple WWDC sessions. If you don’t have time to buffer and watch lasting at least an hour WWDC videos, you can just simply screen text transcriptions and find topics you are interested in. A huge timesaver.
I hope this list will be useful for you. I have been learning iOS programming from all of the above sites and I can truly recommend them for every wannabe iOS developer.
If you find this post worth reading, please click the share button below — it can help other newbie iOS devs too, and also it will spread the good word about all that amazing authors standing behind these tutorials. Also, if you are a Medium user, please click the Recommend button — it truly inspires me to write more when I see other people find my work useful!
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