How to show touches in iOS App Previews – now updated for Swift

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Lukas under iOS development | No comments

With auto-playing App Preview videos in iOS 11 App Store, it is now more important than ever to make your videos shine and stand out. If your app is heavy on interactive transitions and gestures, you might find it difficult to capture that in the video without resorting to some complex post-processing tools like Final Cut Pro and re-creating the interaction touches on a frame-to-frame basis.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. I’ve built a small open source component that will automatically show all touches in your app as they are happening. You simply drop it into your project and you’re ready to record kick-ass footage for your new App Preview.

It’s called GSTouchesShowingWindow and it’s available on GitHub. The original version was released almost 3 years ago, but today I’m happy to announce that a new, significantly improved version is now available. Most importantly:

  • It’s in Swift! Compatible with Swift 3.2 and Swift 4.0
  • Short touches are visualized using an animation of expanding circle.
  • App Extensions (such as Today extension or Keyboard extension) are supported.
  • Podspec for easy integration using CocoaPods.

You can check out the repo along with detailed steps on how to get it working here: GSTouchesShowingWindow-Swift on GitHub.

I hope you’ll find it useful! And if you do end up using it in your video, please let me know either on Twitter (@luksape) or in the comments below.