5 Best iOS Design Patterns in Swift to Develop Powerful iPhone Apps

5 min readApr 19, 2022

iOS design patterns are an important part of the development process. Thanks to reusable templates, you can greatly optimize the development and reduce the error rate.

You will be able to create powerful applications in less time. In this article, we will look at the most successful examples of using templates, and explain the feasibility of using them for business.

What are Design Patterns?

Using iOS design templates is a great solution to speed up app development. This method involves reusable solutions to common problems, which is especially true for implementing and managing complex code structures.

Thus, a software design pattern is a solution to specific problems that arise when developing an app architecture. Unlike, for example, open-source libraries, you cannot take and integrate a piece of code into an already written one. A design pattern is more of a pattern for how iOS app development should be built.

Proven solutions and common vocabulary allow you to create a working solution quickly and efficiently. You also achieve code unification, which helps with scaling later.

Types of Design Patterns in iOS App Development

There are currently 26 types of design patterns in iOS. All of them lend themselves to categorization, based on which part of the application they belong to.

Creational Design Patterns

This pattern refers to the creation of objects or classes. Units of objects here are created based on a specific situation. Among the main creative design patterns are: abstract factory, factory method, singleton, builder, and prototype.

Structural Design Patterns

This template allows you to create an application architecture. All this simplifies the development of the design by implementing simplification between classes and objects. Examples of structural architecture patterns include decorator, facade, composite, adapter, proxy, MVC design pattern and so on.

Behavior Design Patterns

Behavioral design helps define relationship patterns between entities and help implement them. Examples of behavior patterns include mediators, strategy, visitors, chains of responsibility, and so on.

Top 5 Design Patterns in Swift

Because iOS apps are built using the Swift programming language. There are several basic design patterns Swift that are used in development.

Template Builder

This template allows you to create complex objects from simple ones. By creating different representations of objects based on the same code. The Builder pattern requires an object’s construction to be separated from its own class. That is, to create an object, you need to sequentially call the construction methods only for those configurations that you need.

Template Adapter

Represents a structural app template that allows objects with incompatible interfaces to interact. This is a great choice when you need to use a third party class whose interface doesn’t match your application code. Or when you need to use multiple existing subclasses without specific functionality.

Decorator Pattern

Structural pattern that allows new functions to be attached to an object. The template places the target object inside another wrapper object. As a result, the base behavior of your target object is launched, with the addition of the object’s own behavior.

Facade Template

A structural pattern that is intended to provide a basic interface for a library, framework, or complex class system. Thus, you get only the functions you need, and everything else is hidden as unnecessary.

Template Method

A behavioral template that defines the skeleton of an algorithm and delegates tasks to subclasses. However, the overall structure remains unchanged. This is a good choice if you have multiple classes that do similar things.

When to Use Design Patterns

Design patterns come from structural engineering. This allows you to build the structure of the application to achieve your goals. You must understand the basic requirements for the work, and based on this, select the architecture of the future project.

Design patterns are established working solutions to standard problems. When you use design patterns, you can pick up a solution without having to adapt to it.

If you need to reduce the amount of design work, the use of design patterns is justified and advisable. But don’t go overboard with templates, as this will lead to a solution that is unsupported and buggy.

Design Methods of Our Choice

We at TopDevs pay great attention to creating quality design. It depends on the convenience and attractive appearance of the application whether the application will be popular with users.

In addition to clearly matching the voice of your brand, our design solutions improve the logic of the product and browse to give users what they want. We use certain software design patterns due to the project’s features.

We develop the project architecture based on the business logic and vision of the customer. We implement all this in a prototype, for a clear understanding of the project’s prospects. We also pay close attention to the creation of UX / UI design, as this is the factor that allows you to win against the background of competitors.

To Wrap Up

Choosing a design pattern is an individual decision for each project with a specific set of requirements. As a programming language, Swift offers a lot of possibilities and with the right application, you can create an application of almost any level of complexity with it.

It is important to understand that only with the right choice of design pattern can you create a more flexible and comprehensively functional application. At the same time, the development process itself will be much easier, as well as further maintenance and updating of the product.