Reference Guide

Apple Official Reference Guide

When you are learning iOS development the number of programming guide can be overwhelming. We have produce a list below for your reference.

Swift Programming Guide

The most essential guide for Swift programming is the official guide named "The Swift Programming Language". You can access this guide online or you can download the e-book in the iBook store under Swift Programming Series.

For seasoned programmers with Objective C experience you can refer to this guide "Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C". Similarly, this book can be downloaded from the iBook store under Swift Programming Series.

Pre-release Version

Additionally once you are familiar with Swift programming you might want to look at the pre-release programming guide for new programming features. Both of the pre-release version of the programming guide is also available under Swift Programming Series in the iBook store.
The pre-release version of "The Swift Programming Language - Prerelease" is also available online.
You can access the pre-release version of "Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C - Prerelease" here.
If the pre-release version is the same as the current official version, this means that the revision for the next release is not out yet.

Swift Standard Library

You can refer to Swift Standard Library at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios//documentation/General/Reference/SwiftStandardLibraryReference/index.html.

iOS Development Guide

For Swift programming you just need either 2 or 4 of the official guide depending on whether you are integrating with Objective-C.
For iOS development there are many more guides available. We will list the most essential guide first follow by special guides that you may or may not need depending on your apps requirement.
Please note that these reference guide are not tutorials, if you don't have any app development experience perhaps you should refer to the tutorials on this site or any other teaching textbook.

You can also use the tutorial provided by Apple, the tutorial is known as Start Developing iOS Apps (Swift).

Most Essential iOS Development Guide

The most comprehensive and essential guide for iOS development are:
App Programming Guide for iOS -  This programming guide explains the basic architecture of iOS app and how to handle the apps transition. This is a more conceptual guide that allows you to have a better understanding of how apps behave in iOS. If you find this guide too abstract, you can defer reading this guide until you have more programming experience. Eventually you must read through this guide so that you know how apps behave in iOS.

iOS Human Interface Guidelines (also available in iBook store) - This programming guide mainly concerns with the design of an app. The guide suggest some practice to create a consistent app with pleasant user experience. This guide will also touches on each special technology such as 3D touch, gesture recognizer etc and advise us how to use these technology in your app. Finally, the guide explain various UI controls available in iOS development and advise us on how to use these controls. The main objective of this guide is to guide developer to create a great user experience. You should start this guide from the beginning. You may skip the middle section where all other special technology are discussed. You should explore the last section where all the UI controls are explained.

Debugging with Xcode - This guide shows us how to test and debug our program in Xcode. You can skip this guide if you already know how to troubleshoot your app using Xcode.

iOS Technology Overview - This guide just show us all the technologies available in the iOS development platform and it provide a brief introduction on each technology. You may skip this guide if you are not ready to use these technologies. However, please browse through this guide just for a basic understanding on what's available.

Essential Guide for App Distribution

The following guides are essential if you want to distribute your app immediately. If you are at the learning stage and not in a hurry to deploy apps in the app store, you may skip this section first until you are ready.

App Distribution Quick Start - This app guide you to through the process of registering as app developer.

App Distribution Guide - This guide explain the process of submitting the app to the app store.

iOS Technology Guide

Listed below are additional programming guide for specific technology. We do not need to go through every guide but we can check out those guide if we need to adopt certain technology according to the app requirement. 

In the first section, we have pick out the essential guides that are common most app. In the second section we list guides that are related to managing the settings or preference of an app. The last section is a list of all other technology.

Essential Guide


Programming Guide on Managing App Settings 

  • Preferences and Settings Programming Guide
  • Resource Programming Guide
  • Bundle Programming Guide
  • Internationalization and Localization Guide
  • Property List Programming Guide
  • Information Property List Key Reference

Other Technology Guide


  • A Short Practical Guide to Blocks
  • Address Book Programming Guide for iOS
  • AirPlay Overview
  • App Extension Programming Guide
  • Audio Queue Services Programming Guide
  • Audio Session Programming Guide
  • AVFoundation Programming Guide
  • Camera Programming Topics for iOS
  • CFNetwork Framework Reference
  • CFNetwork Programming Guide
  • Concurrency Programming Guide
  • Core Animation Programming Guide
  • Core Audio Overview
  • Core Bluetooth Programming Guide
  • Core Data Programming Guide
  • Text Programming Guide
  • Document Picker Programming Guide
  • Document-Based App Programming Guide for iOS
  • Drawing and Printing Guide for iOS
  • External Accessory Programming Topics
  • File System Programming Guide
  • Game Center Programming Guide
  • Game Controller Programming Guide
  • Handoff Programming Guide
  • iAd Programming Guide
  • iCloud Design Guide
  • In-App Purchase Programming Guide
  • Instruments User Guide
  • Local and Remote Notification Programming Guide
  • Location and Maps Programming Guide
  • Metal Programming Guide
  • Newsstand Kit Framework Reference
  • OpenGL ES Programming Guide for iOS
  • SDK Compatibility Guide
  • SpriteKit Programming Guide
  • Text Programming Guide for iOS
  • URL Session Programming Guide
  • Wallet Developer Guide


iOS API Reference Guide

API reference is just like a dictionary for us to check the usage of an API. The official API reference can be found at Apple API Reference.

Among the vast list of API, the basic API reference are listed below:


For the rest of API please refer to the main site.



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