To achieve customer satisfaction, mobile app developers must ensure that their apps perform optimally. No users want an app that requires a longer launch time or respond slowly to input, or makes numerous large network requests that often lead to higher data charges and increased battery drain. If an app displays any of these behaviors, it can frustrate users and prompt uninstallation. Fortunately, XCode provides tools that can be used to inspect, monitor, and fix problems associated with iOS app performance, thereby offsetting user dissatisfaction.
The first step to appreciating your XCode app’s performance is gathering information from multiple sources. Use the XCode Organizer to gather metrics on various features of your app, including launch time, user-interface responsiveness, writes to storage, memory use, energy use, and diagnostic reports for disk write, crashes, and energy. View and record metrics on average pixel luminance, cellular network conditions, and durations associated with your app using MetricKit. And garner feedback on the beta version of your app via Testflight testers. By collecting all these information, you’ll be able to determine the areas or aspects that require the most improvements.
Use XCode Instruments to profile your app and select a profiling template relevant to the metric you’re considering. For unresponsiveness and hangs, use the Time Profiler template. Use the Allocations and Leaks template for memory issues, Energy Log template for power-consumption problems, and File Activity template for I/O issues. Consider using the Network template for network-related issues.
You’ll get more precise measurements profiling on a device instead of the simulator. If the information you gather reveals that your app performs poorly on a particular class or model of the device, profile on that device. Look for the code that’s causing the performance problem, and develop a plan for improving it. Remember that your change may not be localized to a particular line or even function, and you may need to make significant architectural changes to your app.
Once you have an improvement plan in place, the next step is to execute the change. Create an “after” profile in Instruments that you can compare with the “before” profile to make sure your change resulted in an improvement. Use the XCTest tool to write a performance test to protect against future regressions in performance and record that this problem existed and has been fixed.
After you change your app to tackle the essential performance issue you observed, ensure that the change had the desired effect and that the level of improvement is sufficient. To determine if the change resulted in an upgrade or regression, use the graphs of performance metrics for each version of your app in XCode’s Metrics organizer.
Finally, figure out whether the metric on which you were working on is still the most crucial to address or whether the data points to another metric for the next iteration of the performance improvement cycle.
By adopting XCode techniques and implementing these essential steps, you can significantly amplify your app’s performance, the user experience and their perception of your company. Regular monitoring of your app using the above-mentioned instruments will ensure early detection of defects and prompt improvements. Remember that even when your measurements and observations show no pressing performance problems, you should still carry out investigations and do preventive work to keep your app’s performance from regressing.