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Most Used SDKs in Top 200 Free iOS Apps

121 points by kilimchoi 10y ago

frsandstone 10y ago
This is amazing!
uwemaurer 10y ago
The Top SDKs for Android apps are listed here: http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev
- shujito 10y ago
  How does that site knows which libraries are used on the apps?
  - guelo 10y ago
    Probably by looking at the java package names.
chrisBob 10y ago
Not viewable on mobile Safari. Is that some kind of joke?
- nekitamo 10y ago
  I was able to view it on mobile Safari just fine.
K0nserv 10y ago
Pretty surprising to see Alamofire above AFNetworking given that AFNetworking is the Objective-C variant and Alamofire is for Swift. That almost seems to indicate that there are more Swift apps in the top 200 then Objective-C apps. Of course one can use Alamofire in Objective-C, but that just seems like making your life harder than it needs to be
- mightyshane 10y ago
  We found that interesting too. You can see the apps that upgrade from Objective-C to Swift as well when they uninstall AFNetworking for Alamofire. It's usually accompanied by a huge overhaul of a bunch of SDKs.
- skronch 10y ago
  Note that these are the top 200 trending apps (not most used or popular iOS apps), so the data set will skew towards newer (and more likely to be written in Swift) apps.
obj-g 10y ago
Much love to AFNetworking and SDWebImage. Thanks for all the spare time you've given me.
- zazpowered 10y ago
  Saved me so much time when I was developing my apps
stepanhruda 10y ago
What surprised me: * Spark-SDK – This is for controlling IoT devices, why does Snapchat, Netflix and Spotify ship this? * Squareup – Do people use this over Stripe? Or what is the use case?
- dalbin 10y ago
  Yes, that's really surprising. Maybe a name clash ?
serg_chernata 10y ago
Very cool, I love seeing something like this as opposed to just asking people what they recommend or looking at git activity alone.
besselheim 10y ago
Very interesting - does anyone know exactly what techniques they use to gather this data? I'm guessing to some extent it must rely on a jailbroken iOS to get past the .ipa code encryption, as with this similar analysis: https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-the-top-100-ios-apps-5b845ad927b7 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-th...
- nekitamo 10y ago
  I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think ObjectiveC metadata is covered by the Fairplay code encryption. If that is the case, then you can just download the .ipas using iTunes, and then run classdump ( http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/ http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/ ) on them to get a list of ObjC classes. From the class names, you can then figure out which frameworks are linked in the app binary. No jailbreak required :)
obj-g 10y ago
I didn't do it at first, most probably did, but if you click through to the Top 200 themselves and select an app, you can see all the SDKs the app uses. Pretty cool.
- jasonlew 10y ago
  Yep. We've actually collected SDK data on around 350K iOS apps and over 1M Android apps, and can scan new ones on the spot (Live Scan).
  - willstrafach 10y ago
    this is cool stuff, we are doing similar things at beta.verify.ly (although more of a security focus rather than BI) how much fun did you have figuring out generation of kbsync and the crazy iTunes otp / auth tokens? :)
VOYD 10y ago
I totally read that headline wrong at first glance, "TOP 200 most used SDKs used in iOS apps" ;)
atishay811 10y ago
I never heard about Fabric. Can't seem to understand what they do from their website. There is no mention of what it does on the home page. Is this some sort of an analytics library?
- niftich 10y ago
  It's the result of Crashlytics, a crash reporting library, being acquihired by Twitter. Now it's bundled with the Twitter SDKs and Twitter's ad network integration. I'm not affiliated with it, but have written several comments about it [1] [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20fabric&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20fabric&sort=byDate&p...
- stepanhruda 10y ago
  The branding is very confusing and ends up adding a bunch of buzzwords instead of explaining what it is. On a side note, why do people use closed source Crashlytics, when there are open source solutions available (still run by for profit companies, but source of their SDKs are open)?
  - lentil 10y ago
    It's really quite a nice crash reporting product. I think that outweighs the closed-source point for a lot of folks.
    - obj-g 10y ago
      Totally agree. Once you get used to it, it's very well done and great UI.
joshavant 10y ago
Alamofire (an all-Swift library) is linked in 31% more of the top 200 free apps than AFNetworking (an all-Objective C library). I guess Swift is still making headway into Big Apps... Also, 6 apps are still using ASIHTTPRequest, despite the last release being 5 years ago. Worse still, 3 apps use a combination of ASIHTTPRequest, AFNetworking, and Alamofire - that's a library that was abandoned 5 years ago, an Objective-C library, and a Swift library. Oh man.
- topstriker515 10y ago
  Keep in mind that some SDKs have internal dependencies. Those apps could just be linking a set of SDKs that happen to include those 3 networking libraries.
allsystemsgo 10y ago
MBProgressHUD? Really? It's not that hard to write your own progress indicator.
- zazpowered 10y ago
  Why even bother to write your own though if theres a good solution available

121 points by kilimchoi 10y ago

This is amazing!

The Top SDKs for Android apps are listed here: http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev

shujito 10y ago
How does that site knows which libraries are used on the apps?
- guelo 10y ago
  Probably by looking at the java package names.

chrisBob 10y ago

Not viewable on mobile Safari. Is that some kind of joke?

nekitamo 10y ago
I was able to view it on mobile Safari just fine.

K0nserv 10y ago

Pretty surprising to see Alamofire above AFNetworking given that AFNetworking is the Objective-C variant and Alamofire is for Swift. That almost seems to indicate that there are more Swift apps in the top 200 then Objective-C apps. Of course one can use Alamofire in Objective-C, but that just seems like making your life harder than it needs to be

mightyshane 10y ago
We found that interesting too. You can see the apps that upgrade from Objective-C to Swift as well when they uninstall AFNetworking for Alamofire. It's usually accompanied by a huge overhaul of a bunch of SDKs.
skronch 10y ago
Note that these are the top 200 trending apps (not most used or popular iOS apps), so the data set will skew towards newer (and more likely to be written in Swift) apps.

obj-g 10y ago

Much love to AFNetworking and SDWebImage. Thanks for all the spare time you've given me.

zazpowered 10y ago
Saved me so much time when I was developing my apps

stepanhruda 10y ago

What surprised me: * Spark-SDK – This is for controlling IoT devices, why does Snapchat, Netflix and Spotify ship this? * Squareup – Do people use this over Stripe? Or what is the use case?

dalbin 10y ago
Yes, that's really surprising. Maybe a name clash ?

serg_chernata 10y ago

Very cool, I love seeing something like this as opposed to just asking people what they recommend or looking at git activity alone.

besselheim 10y ago

Very interesting - does anyone know exactly what techniques they use to gather this data? I'm guessing to some extent it must rely on a jailbroken iOS to get past the .ipa code encryption, as with this similar analysis: https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-the-top-100-ios-apps-5b845ad927b7 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-th...

nekitamo 10y ago
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think ObjectiveC metadata is covered by the Fairplay code encryption. If that is the case, then you can just download the .ipas using iTunes, and then run classdump ( http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/ http://stevenygard.com/projects/class-dump/ ) on them to get a list of ObjC classes. From the class names, you can then figure out which frameworks are linked in the app binary. No jailbreak required :)

obj-g 10y ago

I didn't do it at first, most probably did, but if you click through to the Top 200 themselves and select an app, you can see all the SDKs the app uses. Pretty cool.

jasonlew 10y ago
Yep. We've actually collected SDK data on around 350K iOS apps and over 1M Android apps, and can scan new ones on the spot (Live Scan).
- willstrafach 10y ago
  this is cool stuff, we are doing similar things at beta.verify.ly (although more of a security focus rather than BI) how much fun did you have figuring out generation of kbsync and the crazy iTunes otp / auth tokens? :)

VOYD 10y ago

I totally read that headline wrong at first glance, "TOP 200 most used SDKs used in iOS apps" ;)

atishay811 10y ago

I never heard about Fabric. Can't seem to understand what they do from their website. There is no mention of what it does on the home page. Is this some sort of an analytics library?

niftich 10y ago
It's the result of Crashlytics, a crash reporting library, being acquihired by Twitter. Now it's bundled with the Twitter SDKs and Twitter's ad network integration. I'm not affiliated with it, but have written several comments about it [1] [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20fabric&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20fabric&sort=byDate&p...
stepanhruda 10y ago
The branding is very confusing and ends up adding a bunch of buzzwords instead of explaining what it is. On a side note, why do people use closed source Crashlytics, when there are open source solutions available (still run by for profit companies, but source of their SDKs are open)?
- lentil 10y ago
  It's really quite a nice crash reporting product. I think that outweighs the closed-source point for a lot of folks.
  - obj-g 10y ago
    Totally agree. Once you get used to it, it's very well done and great UI.

joshavant 10y ago

Alamofire (an all-Swift library) is linked in 31% more of the top 200 free apps than AFNetworking (an all-Objective C library). I guess Swift is still making headway into Big Apps... Also, 6 apps are still using ASIHTTPRequest, despite the last release being 5 years ago. Worse still, 3 apps use a combination of ASIHTTPRequest, AFNetworking, and Alamofire - that's a library that was abandoned 5 years ago, an Objective-C library, and a Swift library. Oh man.

topstriker515 10y ago
Keep in mind that some SDKs have internal dependencies. Those apps could just be linking a set of SDKs that happen to include those 3 networking libraries.

allsystemsgo 10y ago

MBProgressHUD? Really? It's not that hard to write your own progress indicator.

zazpowered 10y ago
Why even bother to write your own though if theres a good solution available