Extensions in iOS 8: finally Apple opens up to developers

ios-8-sdk

Apple begins to deliver what it promised a year ago, when Tim Cook himself assured that little by little it would open up to developers giving them access to features reserved up to that moment to the system and without the possibility of modifications. With the arrival of iOS 8, developers for the first time will have numerous tools that will allow them to make their applications much more powerful, make better use of system resources and even modify aspects of the system. Something unthinkable a couple of years ago has finally arrived on iOS, and although widgets and keyboards have been the main protagonists after Keynote, there are other extensions that are going to be very important. We explain it in more detail below.

Widgets in the Notification Center

Widgets-iOS-8

Widgets are finally coming to iOS, and although they don't do it as many would have liked, they are a great advance. Apple will allow developers to implement their widgets in the Notification Center, will allow you to choose which widgets we want to install and which we do not want to appear, even allowing us to hide the ones that the system brings by default. The "Today" screen of the Notification Center will no longer be useless and will allow us at a glance to see the results of our favorite teams, detailed weather information or whatever the developers want to include.

Keyboard

Keyboards-iOS-8

Another of the great advances that many of us have been demanding for a long time. The iOS keyboard improves with the new version of the system. During the days that I have been testing iOS 8 on my iPhone, the predictive keyboard is a major advance, and the word suggestion stops being annoying to really help. It is also very "intelligent" and learns as you use it, becoming quite comfortable to write. But it is also that Apple will allow developers to create keyboards for iOS, so Swiftkey or Fleksy will be a reality shortly, when iOS 8 is public, and we can choose if we want to use the normal iOS keyboard or install one of these famous keyboards on other platforms. The user can finally decide.

Actions

To understand this extension well, it is best to remember the example that Apple showed in the presentation: within Safari, a text was selected and thanks to this extension it was possible to translate text to another language using Bing. That is, actions allow to increase the functions of an application thanks to other external applications.

Photo editor

The iOS Photos application allows them to be edited with different filters and tools, which have also been increased and improved in iOS 8. But if you want to use another third-party application to edit your photos, until now you had to install the application, give it access to your library, import those photos into the application and edit them from there. This sometimes involves a series of unnecessary steps that make the job quite tedious. In iOS 8, without leaving the iOS Photos app you can use the editing tools of your favorite application and save the result in your own library.

File storage

Storage-iOS-8

Thanks to this extension the services of cloud storage can be integrated into iOS, and applications that access files will be able to select from which provider to get the information. This will make it much easier to work with different cloud storage systems, once services such as Dropbox, Box, OneDrive and the like have created their extensions and have been integrated into the system. Moving files between different services will also be much easier.

Document Picker

This extension erases a red line that Apple had established since its inception: the sandbox. Until now, each application created its environment (sandbox) within which it could work, but it was inaccessible from another application, and could not access the other. Now iOS 8 will allow applications to share data with each other, always going through the system itself, which will guarantee the security and privacy of the data.

This is just a small sample of what developers will be able to do with iOS 8, and how it will undoubtedly change our concept of iOS. A breakthrough that we have long wanted and that has begun. Hopefully keep moving forward with the new updates.


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