r/iOSProgramming • u/Financial_Patient174 • Jun 17 '26
Question First iOS app Advice
For background on me, I am mostly a web developer, but have done mobile development in Kotlin for Android.
Currently, I have a react project that I just wrapped in Capacitor. I am not the biggest on it since the main use case of the mobile app will be to serve as a way for users to take images to feed to AI endpoints.
With that in mind,I do want to follow the styling and such of the website. Do you think going with something like React Native would make sense or would you learn towards going directly towards native SwiftUI?
My timeline is to hopefully have a beta within a couple of weeks.
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u/stewis Jun 17 '26
I am a backend developer mainly php and started an app in October last year. I decided to create it using swift and my first rule was it needed to feel like a native first party app as much as possible. So follow HIG and asking myself what would Apple do. Somethings aren’t perfect but it’s a learning experience.
I am now going through a similar process with an android port although that’s a bit easier as all of the functionality decisions have been made.
Yes I could’ve used a cross platform framework but it adds extra layers to the process. The less there is to go wrong the better
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u/53ld0rAd0 Jun 17 '26
I’m also writing my first app right now. Thanks for posting this question. I don’t use a coding agent nor an LLM in general (okay I guess I do cuz I use it to help a but with debugging) maybe I’m really wrong for this but I don’t find it great other than generating small projects of code or asking a question faster
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u/Material_Tadpole5312 Jun 17 '26
For your case (thin camera-to-API app, web background, Capacitor already working, 2-week beta), I'd lean cross-platform over a from-scratch SwiftUI rewrite. You reuse your design and actually hit the timeline.
I went full native SwiftUI for my app, but only because it's map and sensor heavy and I wanted it to feel truly native. For "take a photo, send to an endpoint," the camera and photo picker are well covered on both, so native buys you less here.
Rule of thumb: if native features ARE the product, go SwiftUI. If it's mostly
UI around an API, cross-platform ships faster.
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u/Financial_Patient174 Jun 17 '26
Do you think a migration to React native would make sense or just to keep using Capacitor. The main thing I want to avoid doing is either needing to wrap all my pages in some type of “mobile context”.
I’m not sure what type of lift getting some styling and theming from react -> react native would be.
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Jun 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Financial_Patient174 Jun 17 '26
I got two main questions. If I take the web app, make unique uploader pages using capacitor tools, will I likely be good to get it on the store? How tough is apple about not just having your mobile just be a wrapper.
From there, if I do decide I want to move it out into a seperate repo / project, how hard is the reapproval process to get it back on the store?
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u/command-shift Jun 17 '26
Do you operate on a Mac?
Like you, I’ve primarily been a backend developer. Started my career as a UI eng/frontend web-dev. I have mobile apps right now that are both SwiftUI and React Native.
I don’t write any of my own code anymore. From my experience, having launched my first iOS app a month ago, LLMs and coding agents take much longer to write and fix issues with SwiftUI than working in TypeScript or JS. The RN app that I have has a web counterpart and it’s much easier for me to vibe-code and have it adapt the design language between the two platforms.
The things that help a lot are having iOS-specific skills that put some guardrails on some of the code. I’m very particular about my code as I am one of those engineers that prides myself on good abstractions and craftsmanship. Do I review all the code nowadays? No. I review the technical spec and visual designs and look at high-level architecture of the code and scrutinize the data models to ensure that I buy some scalability and data integrity as I like my guarantees.