Firebase Apple Open Source Development

See the subsections below for details about the different installation methods. Where available, it's recommended to install any libraries with a Swift suffix to get the best experience when writing your app in Swift.

1. Standard pod install
2. Swift Package Manager
3. Installing from the GitHub repo
4. Experimental Carthage

Standard pod install

For instructions on the standard pod install, visit: https://firebase.google.com/docs/ios/setup.

Swift Package Manager

Instructions for Swift Package Manager support can be found in the SwiftPackageManager.md Markdown file.

Installing from GitHub

These instructions can be used to access the Firebase repo at other branches, tags, or commits.

Background

See the Podfile Syntax Reference for instructions and options about overriding pod source locations.

Accessing Firebase Source Snapshots

All official releases are tagged in this repo and available via CocoaPods. To access a local source snapshot or unreleased branch, use Podfile directives like the following:

To access FirebaseFirestore via a branch:

pod 'FirebaseCore', :git => 'https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk.git', :branch => 'main'
pod 'FirebaseFirestore', :git => 'https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk.git', :branch => 'main'

To access FirebaseMessaging via a checked-out version of the firebase-ios-sdk repo:

pod 'FirebaseCore', :path => '/path/to/firebase-ios-sdk'
pod 'FirebaseMessaging', :path => '/path/to/firebase-ios-sdk'

Carthage (iOS only)

Instructions for the experimental Carthage distribution can be found at Carthage.md.

Using Firebase from a Framework or a library

For details on using Firebase from a Framework or a library, refer to firebase_in_libraries.md.

To develop Firebase software in this repository, ensure that you have at least the following software:

• Xcode 15.2 (or later)

CocoaPods is still the canonical way to develop, but much of the repo now supports development with Swift Package Manager.

CocoaPods

Install the following:

• CocoaPods 1.12.0 (or later)
• CocoaPods generate

For the pod that you want to develop:

pod gen Firebase{name here}.podspec --local-sources=./ --auto-open --platforms=ios

Note: If the CocoaPods cache is out of date, you may need to run pod repo update before the pod gen command.

Note: Set the --platforms option to macos or tvos to develop/test for those platforms. Since 10.2, Xcode does not properly handle multi-platform CocoaPods workspaces.

Firestore has a self-contained Xcode project. See Firestore/README Markdown file.

Development for Catalyst

• pod gen {name here}.podspec --local-sources=./ --auto-open --platforms=ios
• Check the Mac box in the App-iOS Build Settings
• Sign the App in the Settings Signing & Capabilities tab
• Click Pods in the Project Manager
• Add Signing to the iOS host app and unit test targets
• Select the Unit-unit scheme
• Run it to build and test

Alternatively, disable signing in each target:

• Go to Build Settings tab
• Click +
• Select Add User-Defined Setting
• Add CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED setting with a value of NO

Swift Package Manager

• To enable test schemes: ./scripts/setup_spm_tests.sh
• open Package.swift or double click Package.swift in Finder.
• Xcode will open the project
  • Choose a scheme for a library to build or test suite to run
  • Choose a target platform by selecting the run destination along with the scheme

Adding a New Firebase Pod

Refer to AddNewPod Markdown file for details.

Managing Headers and Imports

For information about managing headers and imports, see HeadersImports Markdown file.

Code Formatting

To ensure that the code is formatted consistently, run the script ./scripts/check.sh before creating a pull request (PR).

GitHub Actions will verify that any code changes are done in a style-compliant way. Install clang-format and mint:

brew install clang-format@19
brew install mint

Running Unit Tests

Select a scheme and press Command-u to build a component and run its unit tests.

Running Sample Apps

To run the sample apps and integration tests, you'll need a valid GoogleService-Info.plist file. The Firebase Xcode project contains dummy plist files without real values, but they can be replaced with real plist files. To get your own GoogleService-Info.plist files:

1. Go to the Firebase Console
2. Create a new Firebase project, if you don't already have one
3. For each sample app you want to test, create a new Firebase app with the sample app's bundle identifier (e.g., com.google.Database-Example)
4. Download the resulting GoogleService-Info.plist and add it to the Xcode project.

Coverage Report Generation

For coverage report generation instructions, see scripts/code_coverage_report/README Markdown file.

See the sections below for any special instructions for those components.

Firebase Auth

For specific Firebase Auth development, refer to the Auth Sample README for instructions about building and running the FirebaseAuth pod along with various samples and tests.

Firebase Database

The Firebase Database Integration tests can be run against a locally running Database Emulator or against a production instance.

To run against a local emulator instance, invoke ./scripts/run_database_emulator.sh start before running the integration test.

To run against a production instance, provide a valid GoogleServices-Info.plist and copy it to FirebaseDatabase/Tests/Resources/GoogleService-Info.plist. Your Security Rule must be set to public while your tests are running.

Firebase Dynamic Links

Firebase Dynamic Links is deprecated and should not be used in new projects. The service will shut down on August 25, 2025.

Please see our Dynamic Links Deprecation FAQ documentation for more guidance.

Firebase Performance Monitoring

For specific Firebase Performance Monitoring development, see the Performance README for instructions about building the SDK and the Performance TestApp README for instructions about integrating Performance with the dev test App.

Firebase Storage

To run the Storage Integration tests, follow the instructions in StorageIntegration.swift.

Push Notifications

Push notifications can only be delivered to specially provisioned App IDs in the developer portal. In order to test receiving push notifications, you will need to:

1. Change the bundle identifier of the sample app to something you own in your Apple Developer account and enable that App ID for push notifications.
2. You'll also need to upload your APNs Provider Authentication Key or certificate to the Firebase Console at Project Settings > Cloud Messaging > [Your Firebase App].
3. Ensure your iOS device is added to your Apple Developer portal as a test device.

iOS Simulator

The iOS Simulator cannot register for remote notifications and will not receive push notifications. To receive push notifications, follow the steps above and run the app on a physical device.

Vertex AI for Firebase

See the Vertex AI for Firebase README for instructions about building and testing the SDK.

Firebase provides official beta support for macOS, Catalyst, and tvOS. visionOS and watchOS are community supported. Thanks to community contributions for many of the multi-platform PRs.

At this time, most of Firebase's products are available across Apple platforms. There are still a few gaps, especially on visionOS and watchOS. For details about the current support matrix, see this chart in Firebase's documentation.

visionOS

Where supported, visionOS works as expected with the exception of Firestore via Swift Package Manager where it is required to use the source distribution.

To enable the Firestore source distribution, quit Xcode and open the desired project from the command line with the FIREBASE_SOURCE_FIRESTORE environment variable: open --env FIREBASE_SOURCE_FIRESTORE /path/to/project.xcodeproj. To go back to using the binary distribution of Firestore, quit Xcode and open Xcode like normal, without the environment variable.

watchOS

Thanks to contributions from the community, many of Firebase SDKs now compile, run unit tests, and work on watchOS. See the Independent Watch App Sample.

Keep in mind that watchOS is not officially supported by Firebase. While we can catch basic unit test issues with GitHub Actions, there may be some changes where the SDK no longer works as expected on watchOS. If you encounter this, please file an issue.

During app setup in the console, you may get to a step that mentions something like "Checking if the app has communicated with our servers". This relies on Analytics and will not work on watchOS. It's safe to ignore the message and continue, the rest of the SDKs will work as expected.

Additional Crashlytics Notes

• watchOS has limited support. Due to watchOS restrictions, mach exceptions and signal crashes are not recorded. (Crashes in SwiftUI are generated as mach exceptions, so will not be recorded)

Thanks to contributions from the community, FirebaseCombineSwift contains support for Apple's Combine framework. This module is currently under development and not yet supported for use in production environments. For more details, please refer to the docs.

See Roadmap for more about the Firebase Apple SDK Open Source plans and directions.