7 Incredibly Useful Tools to Streamline Your Mobile App Development Workflow

With the introduction of more and more new smart phone and tablet devices every day, it has become even more challenging for developers to build cutting-edge and productive mobile apps in a very short period of time. However, with the right set of mobile app development tools, one can easily develop and deliver apps always on time. Let’s take a look at some of the best and latest tools available in the industry today which you can try to streamline your mobile app development workflow.

Adobe PhoneGap Build:

PhoneGap Build by Adobe is a cloud-based service that allows you to develop app-store ready mobile apps without the headache of installing and maintaining native SDKs on your local computer. All you need to do is upload your HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript assets to their cloud service and PhoneGap Build will do all the work of compiling for you. In fact, it is the only way to build mobile apps for iOS if you don’t own a Mac.

jQuery Mobile:

With a “write less, do more” approach, jQuery Mobile offers you an HTML5-powered user-interface system to help you build a single highly-branded application for all smart phone and tablet devices. There is no need to write different applications for different devices or operating systems. Rather, a single code base renders consistently across all devices, platforms, and browsers. Being a touch-optimized framework, jQuery Mobile provides developers the most flexible and simplest way to create mobile apps.

OpenSSL:

OpenSSL is a robust, feature-packed security library offering an open-source implementation of the TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocols to developers. Written in the programming language C, it allows you to quickly and easily create your own iOS developer or distribution certificate and that too without a Mac device. OpenSSL is free to use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

MacinCloud:

One of the major hurdles often faced by developers while submitting an iOS app to the App Store is the inability of uploading an IPA file to iTunes Connect from a non-Mac or Windows computer. This process requires you to use the Application Loader program which is available only on a Mac device. So if you don’t want to jump on your friend’s Mac device over and over again just to upload your IPA file or perform other Mac-based tasks, try MacinCloud – a very popular remote Mac rental service.

IcoMoon:

Many mobile UI frameworks utilize a font set for icons because using an icon font or a sprite sheet is much more lightweight than using individual images within a mobile app. While mobile app development frameworks like Sencha Touch and Ionic offers you their own set of icons to use in your mobile app, many others don’t come with a set of icons. For such frameworks, you can use IcoMoon to pick and customize icons for your mobile application.

Ionic View:

Ionic View makes it easy for developers to quickly share and test apps built with the Ionic Framework on real Android and iOS devices. Using this handy tool, you can easily collect feedback on your apps with clients, testers, or collaborators from anywhere in the world. Eliminating the need for creating new builds and repeatedly installing them onto your device for testing, Ionic View makes the entire process of mobile app testing a breeze for developers. Just choose the app and version you want to test out and you’re good to go!

MakeAppIcon:

MakeAppIcon is a powerful icon creator with a very cool user interface, using which you can easily generate Android and iOS icons of all sizes with just a few clicks of your mouse. Simply upload a (1536 x 1536) pixel app icon in JPG, PNG or PSD format and it will spit out all the icon sizes required for your iOS and Android apps. Along with providing developers and designers a quick preview of their app icons on different devices, MakeAppIcon also has auto-enhancement functionality for the smaller icons.