Announced at WWDC 2016, iOS 10 introduced a host of changes for developers, the most significant revamp since 2013. The iOS 10 SDK brings new APIs and services that lead to new kinds of apps and features. To work on iOS 10, you would need to code with Swift 3 and also download Xcode 8 to create the iOS apps. Let’s focus on the key developed related features that have been introduced in iOS 10.
Improved user notifications
iOS 10 marks the advent of the user notification framework (UserNotifications.framework) and the user notifications UI framework and the end of UILocalNotification. The user notification framework helps support and handle local and remote notifications. Developers can use the framework classes to modify local and remote notifications as they are sent to the device. The appearance of local and remote notifications can be customized with the help of the user notifications UI framework. With the help of these two frameworks, Apple has not changed the general local notifications, but has significantly improved the functionalities.
The biggest change of the new notification system is that it brings an intermediary between the arrival of the message and the display of the device: a notification service provider capable of end-to-end encryption with the application that receives the encrypted message from Apple, the decryption it is done on the user’s device and displaying the notification in the notification center.
Improved iMessage
A lot of APIs have been introduced in iOS 10, especially improvements to the Messages app. App extensions can interact with Message app and users can send media files, interactive messages, stickers. The sticker pack includes a set of stickers for the content of the message. The iMessage app not only helps users to search for images but also provides a user interface within the app.
From a development perspective, custom interface for messages can be created with the help of MSMessagesAppViewController. MSSession and MSMessage could help in message modification, as the former has built-in support for expiring messages. To provide a custom sticker browser to the message app, the MSStickerBrowserViewController can be used.
As you saw, the new and improved Messages extensions are better and more powerful.
Changes in animations
In iOS 10, better control over animations is established. The ability to control animated properties like resume, stop, or positions is detailed in iOS 10. UIViewPropertyAnimator is the important class that helps to create and trigger the animations.
Speech recognition
A new API is added that supports continuous speed recognition. This helps developers create new applications to recognize speech and transcribe it to text. Most of the magic is done with the help of APIs in the Speech framework, especially with classes like SFSpeechRecognizer, SFSpeechURLRecognitionREquest, SFTranscription, etc.
Siri integration
Integrate with Siri for most applications, such as messages, calls, payments, photos, etc. iOS 10 now allows users to use their voice to perform actions and all of this is achieved with the help of Sirikit. The domains in question must be registered with the answer made.
For non-graphical intents, developers should use Apple Maps, while for graphical intents, also known as intent UI extensions, developers can extend the UI for interface design.
ReplayKit improves
iOS 10 has bought new enhancements to the ReplayKit introduced in iOS 9, namely the introduction of live streaming of Replaykit streams, which means a user can stream media through other sites or apps and stream the extension of USA that helps the user to sign in to a service and set up a stream. . Developers should create the RPBroadcastActivityViewController to allow users to select the streaming service they’d love to use. The action would return RPBroadcastController which helps to start and pause live streams.
There are other smaller improvements and some of them are
- Enable the property for Safari content blockers to verify that the user has activated the content blocker.
- The openURL() method of UIApplication is now deprecated. The application (_:open:options:) should be used instead.
- New property set enabled for UIPasterboard to handle cross-platform clipboard between iOS and macOS.
- The SKTileGroup class has been provided to SpriteKit to make square, hexagonal, or isometric tilemaps.
- For smoother scrolling, prefetchDataSource can help preload content.
