Author: admin

  • Android Studio 4.2 Beta 2 Released

    Google has now released Android Studio 4.2 Beta 2 for early access testing and is available via the Beta channel. If your copy of Android Studio is already subscribed to the Beta channel, it can be downloaded using the Help > Check for Updates (Android Studio > Check for Updates) menu option. If you want to…

  • Preparing and Submitting an iOS App to the App Store

    After developing an iOS application, the final step is submitting it to Apple’s App Store. Preparing and submitting an application is a multi-step process details of which will be covered in this chapter. Verifying the iOS Distribution Certificate The chapter entitled How to Join the Apple Developer Program covered the steps involved in generating signing…

  • Troubleshooting Live Activity Push Notifications

    It can be frustrating when a Live Activity fails to update in response to a push notification, and identifying the cause can initially seem challenging. Part of the problem is that push notifications and Live Activities use systems over which we have little control, such as the APNs, the predictive engine that decides when the…

  • Testing Live Activity Push Notifications

    The previous chapter explained how to add support for push notifications to a Live Activity. Once enabled for push notifications, the Live Activity is ready for testing. Test push notifications can be sent from the CloudKit console or the command line using the curl tool. This chapter will demonstrate both options, including generating the authentication…

  • An iOS 17 Live Activity Push Notifications Tutorial

    Although we have demonstrated that Live Activities can be updated from within an app, a more likely scenario is that the updates will be generated by a remote server and sent to the device. This can be achieved using push notifications. This chapter will introduce push notifications and convert the LiveActivityDemo project from local updates…

  • Adding a Refresh Button to an iOS 17 Live Activity

    The previous chapters introduced Live Activities and created an example project demonstrating Live Activities in action. While testing the example app, it became evident that, regardless of configuration settings, Live Activity updates can be infrequent when the app is in background mode. While we have limited control over when an update will be processed, this…

  • A SwiftUI Live Activity Tutorial

    In this chapter, we will create a project demonstrating how to add a Live Activity to a SwiftUI-based iOS app using WidgetKit and ActivityKit. The project will include support for lock screen, Dynamic Island, and alert activity views, providing a practical example of activity widget attributes and creating, updating, and managing Live Activity instances. About…

  • An Overview of Live Activities in SwiftUI

    The previous chapters introduced WidgetKit and demonstrated how it can be used to display widgets that provide information to the user on the home screen, lock screen, and Today view. Widgets of this type present information based on a timeline you create and pass to WidgetKit. In this chapter, we will introduce ActivityKit and Live…

  • A SwiftData Tutorial

    This chapter will demonstrate how to use SwiftData by creating an example app project. The project will demonstrate how to declare models, create a model container, access the model context, add and delete data entries, establish relationships, and perform database searches. About the SwiftData Project The project will consist of a rudimentary visitor logging app…

  • A Guide to SwiftData

    The preceding chapters covered database storage using Core Data. While Core Data is a powerful and flexible solution to data storage, it was created long before the introduction of SwiftUI and lacks the simplicity of SwiftUI’s approach to app development. Introduced in iOS 17, SwiftData addresses this shortcoming by providing a declarative approach to persistent…