10 Most Popular Mobile App Development Tools

Confronting the growing number of mobile users, more companies shift their business operations and approach potential customers with mobile gadgets. Accordingly, to meet diverse demands for mobile apps, modern-day developers endeavor to find the best mobile app development tools that support them to produce products effectively. In this article, we will explain the top seven development tools of 2024.

What Is App Development?

App development is the act of building a software program on mobile devices and desktops to satisfy different requirements of individuals or companies.

Due to the dominance of mobile programs, the phrase “app development” is implicitly used for creating mobile apps running on two operating systems: Android and iOS.

Thereby, during the development process, stakeholders must ponder a wealth of criteria including hardware specs, configurations, and screen size to guarantee the compatibility of apps with the mentioned platforms.

Moreover, an app’s components must work with each other resourcefully to offer end-users an intuitive and fast interface design.

10 Mobile App Development Tools of 2024

With the growing popularity of app development, the market for app development software will increase by 6.53% annually between 2024 and 2029. But which one should you choose for your app project? The answer depends on various factors. They involve types of mobile apps (e.g., native or hybrid), budgets, your company’s specific requirements, and so on.

Based on these criteria, developers will choose a set of proper tools to best assist the development cycle. Below are 10 popular mobile development tools that we at Designveloper are leveraging for both native & cross-platform projects:

1. Xcode

Xcode is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed and released by Apple. It’s used to code features in iOS native languages (Swift and Objective-C). This IDE supports you in developing, testing, and distributing apps easily across all Apple platforms, be it iOS or iPadOS. Its newest version, Xcode 16, even makes mobile app development faster and more interesting with predictive code completion, interactive previews, and live animations.

Further, in Xcode, you commit changes using Git staging. It means you can record and save a version of your project that includes all the changes (e.g., added lines) made at a specific point in time. Git staging allows you to prepare and organize these modifications before committing them. So, you may decide which changes to include in your next commit without leaving your code editor.

Plus, Xcode supports basic & advanced debugging. In particular, you can use Macros in the source editor to automate repetitive code tasks. This makes it easier to track the code’s behavior during execution. Also, Xcode provides a structured console to facilitate access to debugging results. This allows you to observe and analyze the outcomes easily.

However, during years of working with Xcode, we realize that Xcode uses a lot of disk storage, RAM, or GPU to build apps or run on simulators.

FURTHER READING:

1. 30 Amazing Mobile App Design Software Tools

2. Top 20 Mobile App Design Tools for 2022

2. Android Studio

As the name states, Android Studio is the main IDE to build Android native features provided by Google. This IDE primarily supports Java, Kotlin, and Dart. Its core features include:

• Jetpack Compose: This toolkit offers a wide range of design tools to craft dynamic layouts. It also integrates inspection tools to let you easily preview the layouts and Compose animations on any screen size.

• Intelligent Code Editor: This editor offers code completion using Java, Kotline, and C/C++. This allows you to writer better code more quickly and productively. Plus, it lets you see your code changes promptly with Live Edit when you edit Jetpack Compose.

• Build System: Android Studio’s build system, powered by Gradle, helps you tailor your build to create numerous build versions for different Android devices from a single project. Then, you can use the Build Analyzer to analyze the performance of these builds and identify potential issues early on.

• Android Emulator: This functionality enables your seamless testing of an app across Android devices. You may use responsive layouts that adapt to fit phones, tablets, etc.

• Android App Bundle: Inspect and compare the contents of your app APK files (Android App Bundles) to see how your app size will change between app versions. This gives you a chance to optimize your Android app size before launch.

Beyond these core capabilities, Android Studio (Jellyfish version or above) uses Gemini as an AI assistant to help you write and fix code. Gemini can also answer questions about Android app development. Besides, you can use Android Studio on IDX – a cloud-based IDE – to access and open existing or sample Android app projects on GitHub in your web browser.

However, like Xcode, Android Studio uses a lot of disk storage, RAM, or GPU to build apps or run on simulators.

3. Visual Studio Code

One popular IDE we leverage for cross-platform app projects is Visual Studio Code, or VS Code. It has built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript, and other programming languages. If your language is not already supported in the IDE, don’t worry! VS Code allows you to add extensions (e.g., languages, debuggers, or tools) from the VS Code Marketplace to streamline your development workflow.

The IDE offers an intuitive source code editor with powerful mobile app development tools, such as IntelliSense code completion and debugging. Further, it now integrates GitHub Copilot – an AI programming assistant – to help you generate code more quickly and efficiently. You can also customize your VS Code UI and layout (e.g., color themes) to match your coding style.

Additionally, Visual Studio Code provides other features to assist your development to the fullest. For example, it enables you to work on your projects anywhere, no matter where your project is hosted (in the cloud or locally) or whether you’re connected to the Internet. It also includes an interactive debugger that helps inspect variables, observe call stacks, and execute commands in the console.

4. .NET & .NET MAUI

Previously, Xamarin was one of the most prevalent open-source IDEs that used a single .NET codebase to build native apps. Unfortunately, since May 1st 2024, it has been no longer supported by Microsoft.

Accordingly, all Xamarin versions, including Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Mac, are now directly incorporated into .NET (starting with .NET 6) to become .NET for Android, .NET for iOS, and .NET for Mac respectively. So, in case you’re still working on Xamarin projects, you should upgrade them to .NET SDK-style projects for continuous support.

Beyond these .NET versions, Microsoft also replaces Xamarin.Forms with .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI). This evolution version also allows you to build cross-platform apps using a shared C# codebase. In other words, it offers access to native APIs completely in C# that help you build native multi-platform UIs directly in XAML. This XML-based markup has outstanding features like data binding.

When your app starts up, whatever code you create (like a button), .NET MAUI will generate and render the native control. This means you’ll get UIkit on iOS, Android Widgets on Android, Mac Catalyst on Mac, and the latest Windows App SDK & WinUI 3 on Windows. Accordingly, you may run iOS apps directly on Mac devices but still light up Mac features.

Beyond the creation of UIs, .NET MAUI allows for shared business logic, such as Models, View Models, RESTful Service Calls, Databases, and so on.

5. Fastlane

Fastlane is a command line interface (CLI) that helps you streamline the building and deployment of mobile apps. It also allows you to customize different configurations to fit your needs. The mobile app development tool offers automation to handle several tedious tasks on your behalf:

• Capture screenshots: Fastlane can automatically take localized screenshots based on the preset configuration.

• Distribute beta builds: It automates beta distribution tasks (like incrementing the build version or uploading the app). It supports more than 15 beta testing services (e.g., TestFlight or Hockey) while allowing you to switch between these services without the need to reconfigure Fastlane.

• Automate app deployment: You can build a repeatable custom workflow to create, upload, & distribute new releases to the app store.

• Enable automatic code signing for iOS: Fastlane enables you to store your code signing identities and profiles in your own private, encrypted Git repository. Once set up, every developer in your team can recreate signed builds on any computer.

6. Ionic

This mobile app development tool is free and open-sourced. Its aim is to make cross-platform web, hybrid and native apps with a single JavaScript codebase. 

A diverse library of core native plugins, UI components, and tools are combined with the most popular front-end frameworks (JavaScript, Angular, React, and Vue) to make highly interactive designs.

Beyond that, the tool offers advanced mobile biometric, storage, and security methods including Identity Vault, Auth Connect, and Secure Storage. One outstanding feature of this development tool is Ionio CLI, a go-to tool to ease the development of Ionic apps. 

7. Flipper

Flipper is a desktop-based platform for debugging iOS, Android, and React Native apps. From a simple interface, you can visualize, inspect, and monitor your apps with ease.

Additionally, the Flipper desktop app and the mobile native SDK collaboratively create a connection that sends data between devices without restrictions. This, therefore, allows you to inspect any use-cases that are happening in your app, be it visualizing the state of local caches or triggering actions on the app from your desktop.

What makes Flipper useful are the plugins built on the top of it, like Logs, Network Inspector, or Layout Inspector. You can customize these plugins to fit your business logic or any use-cases you have in your app. If there’s no plugin that aligns with your preferences, you may build your own. A plugin always has native functionalities written in Java, Objective-C or C++ and has a desktop UI written in React.

8. Bitbucket

Bitbucket is Git control software that we consider is easiest to use and offers the most convenient features to help you manage the source code effectively. It integrates your code and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) in one centralized platform. This allows you to control the full-cycle app development, from writing code to launching apps, without switching between software.

Additionally, Bitbucket offers native capabilities or third-party partners like Snyk, Synopsys, and Sonar to ensure security throughout the development process. These tools constantly detect and fix vulnerabilities during development, code review, or as part of your CI/CD pipeline.

With Bitbucket, you can control organization-wide code quality and ensure compliance through standard or customer merge checks. These checks verify whether all code meets internal standards before being incorporated into the main codebase. Further, you can set up and enforce consistent CI/CD workflows at a platform level. This ensures your whole teams comply with best practices and work as expected.

Bitbucket also boosts communication and collaboration by enabling your teams to share updates via Jira and Confluence. Recently, it also integrates AI and automation features to help developers handle repetitive tasks. They might involve generating pull request (PR) summaries based on code changes and commit messages, getting code suggestions, or reviewing code from your preferred AI tools.

9. Jest

Jest is a unit testing framework for JavaScript projects. It requires no complicated configuration and has comprehensive APIs to work well for most projects. The mobile app development tool provides a rich feature set, including:

• Snapshot testing: This functionality tracks changes in large objects (i.e., UI elements or components) with ease. Snapshots are either embedded within your test files or stored alongside them. This makes it easier to maintain tests when any changes occur.

• Isolated tests: Jest runs your tests in their own processes to maximize performance.

• Easy mocking: Jest uses a custom resolver to simplify simulating any object or function outside of your test’s scope. Further, you may leverage mocked imports with Jest’s Mock Functions API to generate effective tests for JavaScript tests.

• Code coverage: By adding the --coverage flag, Jest can create detailed reports by collecting code coverage information from the entire project, including untested files.

10. Maestro

Maestro is the simplest and most effective framework that many developers use to test mobile user interfaces (UIs), be it iOS or Android.

The tool is developed by learning from its predecessors (e.g., Appium, XCTest, or UIAutomator) to define and test your Flows easily. These Flows are considered parts of the user journey in your app, such as Login, Add to Cart, or Check Out. By monitoring and testing these Flows, you may verify whether the mobile app can navigate potential users down to what they’re finding.

Also, Maestro can predict the unstable factors of your mobile application and devices, like interactions failing or UI elements sometimes not appearing where you expect them. The tool adjusts these inconsistencies accordingly to run tests stably.

Maestro also prevents you from using sleep () calls. This functionality delays the implementation of a program within a certain amount of time. Instead of introducing some pauses in your tests, Maestro automatically waits for them to load (but no longer than required). This boosts speed and reliability.

The tool also supports a super-fast testing iteration. When tests are interpreted, you can immediately see the results of changes in your test files. This proves extremely helpful in dynamic app development environments where quick feedback is crucial.

Outsourcing vs In-House App Development (Which One You Should Choose)

In-house app development means using internal financial and human resources to build an app according to its demands. In other words, the whole development procedure is confined to the company’s walls without the intervention of outside staff. 

Its biggest advantage is the in-house team knows your business and its culture better. Accordingly, the team can produce a deliverable that matches its company goals and requirements.

Concurrently, if the company builds a sturdy development team and provides available patronage, in-house staffing is a low-cost and time-saving method.

However, in case your company doesn’t already have an expert team, it has to spend much more time and costs seeking and training employees for different roles in app development projects. Besides, it must guarantee enough resources and a robust infrastructure to build the desired app. 

Conversely, outsourcing is a preferred method of recruiting some outside professionals or an established development team to customize an app. The investment threshold of outsourcing may be high but this method proves more economical in the long run. 

Some outstanding benefits of outsourcing include:

• Approach to excellent talents in different areas;
• Enhance a deliverable’s quality;
• Shorten the time from building to launching a mobile app;
• Minimize project risks.

However, external hiring has its own drawbacks. Some outsourcing agencies don’t understand your company’s objectives and cultures well, hence failing to build the required product. Not to mention that geography differences can bring about the insecurity of the company’s data and extended deadlines. Having said that, the more competitive outsourcing market, plus the booming of prestigious review websites, help you pick up the right outsourcing partner with reliable operations. 

Diversified needs for mobile apps now make outsourcing ideal for start-ups, medium-sized and large enterprises to develop a custom apps.

Conclusion

There is a pool of available mobile app development tools in the market. However, not all of them are suitable for every project. For example, provided you would like to make a hybrid app, choosing Xcode which is merely designed for Apple operating systems (e.g. iOS, macOS, and watchOS) is a bad idea. Therefore, to facilitate the selection of appropriate programs that support app development, all stakeholders should take into account of project specifics, financial resources, and other important elements.

Otherwise, they can make a wrong choice that possibly slows down the app development process and incurs unanticipated costs.

We know it isn’t easy to make the right choice, but we at Designveloper are here to help you. We offer a wide range of services from web development, and mobile application to business consulting. Tell us now for free estimations! Don’t hesitate to contact us now if you want to upgrade your business with this latest technology.