How to develop an iOS app on your own

Alex Berger
DeployGate
Published in
5 min readJun 9, 2018

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So you want to build an iOS app? Mobile apps have changed our lives in many ways. We use apps to show us how to get where we want to go, apps to check how much money we have in the bank, schedule appointments and tasks and even remotely turn on the lights in our house.

Millions of apps available in app store

Anybody can create an app for any purpose. It could be an app to view the menu and reserve a table at a restaurant, an app to study for a big test. Virtually anything can be simplified in an app that’s easy to use.

First step — Planning

Even if you’re building a single page app, first it has to be planned. Before you build the app and for the development process to be productive, you need to have an organized plan for your app.

Try using paper.

Visualise your app — It may sound obvious, but no app can be made without a general idea. You must ask yourself: What do I want the app to do? What do I want the app to look like? Who will use this app? And basically, have a picture in your mind of what you want to accomplish.

Make a plan — This is a crucial step. Find the time for it, get a pen and some paper, sit down and plan your app. Draw your app’s pages with all the buttons, writing and pictures. Make sure your app does what it’s supposed to in a simple easy to understand way. Go over your plan a few times and make the necessary changes until the app is perfect (at least on paper)

here are ten things to plan when developing a mobile app and here is another article about planning your app.

One more tip — Find apps similar to the one your planning so you can get ideas from and make your app better.

Second step — Building

Stop! Hammer time.

Here’s where you start to take your plan and make an app out of it. There are a lot of app building tools but developing an iOS app will work best on a Mac with Xcode.

You’ll need to download Xcode for Apple Developers and learn how to use it to build an app with this Getting started tutorial. You also need to have an Apple Developer Account to login to Xcode.

There are lots of helpful Youtube videos that can help you build your app and lots of forums where you can ask questions if you get stuck.

At first, it looks a little hard, but it’s not that bad after you get into it. Don’t be hasty, developing a good app takes time and creativity.

Step 3 — Testing

After building your kick-ass app and testing it using the built-in emulator in Xcode, you may think your app is ready to be uploaded to the app store and be downloaded by millions of users — Wrong!

You know how to push all the right buttons.

A good app must be tested by someone other than yourself before distribution. Big companies have QA teams testing an in-development app for weeks and months, they find bugs and UI problems, fix the app than test it again.

What you want to do is share the app with your close friends, family and co-workers, let them test the app by clicking all the buttons and going through all the app pages to see if the app is performing as expected and that there are no bugs to be fixed. In the end, your app needs to do what you meant it to and address the audience you targeted.

App Landing page

The best way to deploy your app to your testers is with DeployGate, a tremendous instant deployment service for apps in development. After you log in, follow the instructions and send your app to anyone with a link to a landing page, you can customize especially for your app.

The people you send your app to for testing don’t have to do anything but click the link or scan the QR code to download and test the app. You can get feedback from your testers with a built-in chat for your app in your dashboard and if you make any changes or version updates they automatically receive a message to download the newest version of your app.

One more thing when dealing with iOS apps, Every iPhone, iPod touch and iPad has a unique identification number associated with it, known as a UDID (Unique Device ID). Your UDID is a 40-digit sequence of letters and numbers. You can find your UDID using iTunes. Usually, you’ll have to ask your testers for their UDID, but with DeployGate there are automated solutions that save you a lot of work.

Step 4 — Release

Congratulations! You built and tested your iOS app. Now submit it to the app store and start getting 5-star ratings from your users.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Please follow all the instructions and don’t skip stages. There are lots of apps out there so if you want your app to be one that users love you got to meet their standards and make an app that performs as expected. For that, you need to thoroughly test and fix your app as much as it takes so when you release it the users would love it and recommend it to their friends.

After going through the process of making your first app, the ones to follow will be easier to make, and after learning from previous mistakes, they will also be a lot better.

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