Top iOS Projects to Sharpen Your Skills and Build Your iOS Portfolio

Whether you are a beginner or advanced iOS developer, landing your dream job can be an uphill battle. That’s why we’ve written this article on the best iOS projects you can take on to enhance your skills and prepare you for the next steps in your career. 

5 Skills That iOS Projects Can Help You Practice

The number of iPhone and iPad users continues to increase rapidly, leading to a growing demand for iOS developers. Working on iOS projects can help you learn new skills or advance your existing ones to secure better job opportunities. Below are some of the essential skills you need to focus on.

• Swift 3.0. Created by Apple, this open-source programming language is used to develop apps for iOS. Working on your Swift coding skills is the first step you should take if you want to work in the iOS environment. There is no need to understand the language inside out. Just focus on basic skills such as syntax, control flow for if & switch statements, error handling, optional classes, inheritance, and initialization.
• Spatial Reasoning. This iOS skill helps you embrace dynamic thinking as it enables you to visualize spatial relations between multiple objects. This allows you to design interfaces for Apple products with user-friendly enhancements. Remember, the end goal of companies is for their clients to have a great experience when using their products. This skill will help you accomplish this when developing new apps. You’ll be able to understand the consumer’s point of view and create functionalities that are accessible and more meaningful to them.
• Design Guidelines. Apple products are known for their intuitive features and design. The company utilizes specific design guidelines to achieve this, whether in single or cross-platform Apple applications. You need to follow these guidelines when you develop apps to ensure they satisfy customers’ expectations.
• Networking. Most apps on your phone interact with the web to perform various tasks. That’s why networking is a key skill for app development, as it enables optimum functioning of a cross-platform mobile application. But how can you incorporate sending and receiving information in your app for project management? You can leverage the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). JSON is a standard format for data interchange, which is relatively straightforward. So, you don’t have to worry if it sounds unfamiliar to you as there are endless ways to learn it, including online courses, bootcamps, or video tutorials.
• Core Data. Imagine the early days of video games where you had to complete all the challenges since you could not save any progress. That’s what your phone would be like if it didn’t have Core Data. Core Data is an essential element of Apple devices as it provides a persistent framework, allowing you to enjoy a great experience when operating your iOS applications. Although learning Core Data may be a bit challenging at first, developing this skill will allow you to take on more complex projects for all Apple devices.

Best iOS Project Ideas for Beginners

Have you just picked up some basic iOS skills and want to try a project to put them to the test? This list includes some of the best iOS projects for beginners so you can implement what you’ve learned.

Develop a Weather App

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

In this project, you create a weather app that can display the current weather in your area, similar to 24 hours forecasting. In addition, the application should also show the current weather conditions of any other location you choose through the user interface.

To take on this project, you can refer to courses like Make Weather App in Swift. If you prefer learning from a video, there are YouTube tutorials on developing a weather App using iOS and Swift. You can follow the steps given there to complete your project successfully.

Frame Grabber

• iOS Skills Practiced: Networking

Frame Grabber is an open-source iOS Application that allows you to extract full-resolution live photo frames as images and videos. Unlike screenshots, Frame Grabber’s full-resolution images have video metadata. It also allows you to choose a compression quality and adjust the exported file formats. This project helps you test your iOS skills while enjoying a great learning experience.

iOS Question AnswerApp

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

This project involves the creation of a question-answer app using Speech API, BERT, Core ML from Apple, and iOS SDK. It explores machine learning and teaches you about word embeddings that are necessary for text processing. There are courses available in Udemy as well as YouTube tutorials that can help you gain a better understanding of Swift and create your Q&A app.

Create a Spotify Clone 

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

This project gives beginners an exciting experience as it helps them learn iOS app development by cloning one of the world’s most famous music apps. There are YouTube tutorials available that walk you through the process. You will have a chance to hone your skills in Swift 5 and Xcode 12.

Sticker App

• iOS Skills Practiced: Spatial Reasoning

This project is simple as it does not utilize a complex user interface. However, you will need to add a section at the bottom for promoting your previous applications or those published in the app store. If you find some steps challenging to execute, refer to Udemy’s tutorial.

Best Intermediate IOS Project Ideas 

If you are looking forward to enhancing your iOS skills and implementing more advanced ideas, below are some great projects to try out.

Develop a Financial App

• iOS Skills Practiced: Apple’s XCode

With this project, you can help people keep a good record of their finances. The project involves creating a financial app with three pages. The first page shows how much money is in your credit card or balance. The second page allows you to add credit card transactions when you spend or receive money. The last page shows the total that you’ve spent throughout a  period.

Calendar HeatMap

• iOS Skills Practiced: GitHub

This project entails developing a calendar-based HeatMap that presents data through colors. In addition, it helps you practice iOS skills such as Git and GitHub. You can have a start date and other dates or group the design by days, months, and years. 

Corona Tracker

• iOS Skills Practiced: Networking and Design Guidelines

This open-source iOS application supports iPadOS and macOS. The Corona Tracker app displays recent COVID-19 data through charts and maps. It features two distribution levels, including cities and countries. Other features you will add to the app include a search for the two levels, a stats sharing option, and a red color scale showing the confirmed cases with impact.

Sleep Tracker

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

Are you an intermediate programming student suffering from irregular sleeping patterns? This project can help you enhance your iOS skills while preparing a resourceful sleep tracker to help you get better sleep. To start, you need to add data logging for easy access, then reporting and data visualizations. The app entails three parameters, including sleep time, sleep duration, and wake-up time.

News Mobile App

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

In this project, you will create an application to access News API and a list of news articles. Then, any time you click an article, it will open in that app. Depending on how long you’ve been practicing iOS app development with Swift, this project can take you between 15 to 20 hours.

Advanced IOS Project Ideas

Once you’ve implemented several tool and app development projects, you’ll want to try your hand at more complex ideas. Below are some advanced projects that can challenge your iOS knowledge and sharpen your skills further.

Restaurants Social Mobile App

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

When developing this app, you will utilize location information, a real-time database, and social features. For example, the project details screen includes the user’s geolocation through Google Maps API and the restaurant and friends tabs. 

All these elements help the user connect with friends at the initial stages of using it. Then they can see which restaurants their friends will be going to. You can either implement this project for iOS or cross-platform mobile applications.

Local Walking Routes Mobile App 

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

This project entails using the Google Maps API to create a native iOS application. The app takes the user’s current location and gives them a random walking route within a specified length of time or distance. Hence, you will need an input option for the machine user to key in their walking time and location tracking to guide them.

Baraba

• iOS Skills Practiced: ARKit

This project involves creating an iOS library that employs ARKit and AVFoundation. These two allow the user to scroll through content using their eyes. With ARKit, you get a camera that does fast face tracking. While it’s only available for iPhone X and subsequent models, you can utilize AVFoundation for the older specifications. 

MultipeerKit

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

This project involves the creation of an Apple framework with a share button. It helps you share information across devices using Bluetooth and WiFi. It’s also used to build Shared Augmented Reality Experiences. You can check the application archive for a high-level abstraction over MultipeerConnectivity. The library follows the codable protocol to simplify the transmitted messages.

Image Filter SwiftUI

• iOS Skills Practiced: Swift

This open-source iOS application leverages the GPUImage framework. It contains a wide range of image filters, providing the user with a great experience. You will also create a grab-and-drop feature that will allow the user to move images directly to the macOS app version.

iOS Starter Project Templates

Starter templates are project demos with work packages and action sheets to guide you on the various steps that you will implement when carrying out different projects. You can utilize starter templates to standardize the tasks you are executing.

• E-commerce iOS App Template. This starter template features Swift 5 source code and runs in Xcode. It has a backed integration with Firebase and is reasonably priced. The fact that it is made by senior Twitter and Instagram engineers makes it top-quality. It also saves energy by eliminating the need for prototyping, bug-fixing, designing, and developing.
• Universal for iOS. This template allows you to develop an app using all the content you want from blogs, playlists, channels, webpages, timelines, or feed, creating a customizable application. It sources information from different platforms, including WordPress, Facebook, YouTube, and RSS. Users can also opt for in-app purchases to eliminate banners and ads.
• ParkOn – Parking App Template. This responsive application is written in Swift 5, helping you find parking and reminding you where you parked. It’s minimalist and intuitive design integrates a Google Map API for easy navigation. It’s also customized with different pins for available, unavailable, and recently picked parking spaces. 
• SwiftUI Instagram Clone. This Xcode project is written in SwiftUI and Swift. It guides you in creating a social network app that’s fully functional and integrated with the Firebase backend. SwiftUI Instagram Clone contains all the features necessary for social networks and is one of the apps in the App Store. In addition, the codebase is customizable, allowing you to make any changes you choose.
• iOS Fitness App template. Written in SwiftUI and Swift, iOS Fitness App Template features charts, stats, workout programs, and social features. The app is fully operational with a coded front end. It also features beautiful animations, exclusive design, and modern source code, allowing you to build a fitness application even faster.

Next Steps: Start Organizing Your iOS Portfolio

Creating tools and applications is a great way to gain practical experience and build your professional portfolio. This is the best way to show potential employers what you are capable of as an iOS developer. Below are some tips you can implement to organize your iOS portfolio and stand out from the competition.

Show Your Consideration of Users’ Perspective

On top of demonstrating you possess technical skills, your iOS portfolio should also show you take user experience into account. When you explain any of your projects, emphasize the problem that your app is solving for the user and the decisions you made while programming from a user’s perspective. 

Show Your Networking and Data Management Skills

Include apps that gather, create, or manage data from Google Cloud or other devices. Such projects will help you learn how to handle connectivity issues, performance, threading, memory management, and data integrity. This will serve as proof to recruiters that you can contribute to their data protection and cross-platform projects effectively.

Work on Your Communication Skills

How you explain your work is just as important as the projects themselves. Make sure to summarize each project in a compelling way and be prepared to answer any technical questions that may arise during an interview. Make sure you are able to highlight the value of your projects even to people who don’t have a background in tech.

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