Quickstart: iOS

This tutorial gets you started sending data from your iOS app to Segment. When you’re done you can turn on any of Segment’s destinations with the flip of a switch! No more waiting for App Store approval.

If you want to dive deeper at any point, check out the iOS Library Reference.

Step 1: Create a Source in the Segment app

Before you begin, you need a Workspace (which is a container that holds all of the sources and destinations which are billed together for an organization). If you already created one, great! If not, you can sign up for a free Segment account and create one.

Next, create an iOS source from your Workspace:

1. Click Add Source.
2. From the source catalog page, click Apple.
3. Click Add Source again from the informational panel that appears to the right.
4. Give the source a display name, and enter the URL the source will collect data from.

When you create a Source in the Segment web app, it tells the Segment servers that you’ll be sending data from a specific source type. When you create (or change!) a Source in the Segment app, Segment generates a new Write Key for that source. You use the write key in your code to tell the Segment servers where the data is coming from, so Segment can route it to your destinations and other tools.

Step 2: Install the SDK

Segment recommends you install Analytics for iOS by using either Cocoapods or your Swift Package Manager. These allow you to create a build with specific bundled destinations, and they have a simplified installation and upgrading process.

Install the SDK using Swift Package Manager

1. In the Project Manager tab of your Xcode project, right click and select Add Package Dependencies.
2. Copy the following link to the Analytics Swift package:

   https://github.com/segmentio/analytics-swift
   

3. Paste the link into the search field of the package dependency window, then click Add Package.

Install the SDK using a Podfile

First, add the Analytics dependency to your Podfile by adding the following line:

pod 'Analytics', '~> 4.1'

Then in your application delegate’s - application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method, set up the SDK like so:

let configuration = AnalyticsConfiguration(writeKey: "YOUR_WRITE_KEY")
configuration.trackApplicationLifecycleEvents = true // Enable this to record certain application events automatically!
configuration.recordScreenViews = true // Enable this to record screen views automatically!
Analytics.setup(with: configuration)

SEGAnalyticsConfiguration *configuration = [SEGAnalyticsConfiguration configurationWithWriteKey:@"YOUR_WRITE_KEY"];
configuration.trackApplicationLifecycleEvents = YES; // Enable this to record certain application events automatically!
configuration.recordScreenViews = YES; // Enable this to record screen views automatically!
[SEGAnalytics setupWithConfiguration:configuration];

Import the SDK in the files that you use it by adding the following line:

import Segment

#import <Analytics/SEGAnalytics.h>

Include additional client side SDKs

To keep the Segment SDK lightweight, the Analytics pod installs the Segment library only. This means that your data is sent to Segment’s servers, and forwarded to any destination tools you enabled that accept the data from Segment.

Some destinations do not accept data coming from the Segment servers and require that you collect data directly from the device. In these cases you must bundle some additional destination code with the Segment SDK.

Many advanced marketing automation and analytics tools offer an SDK or allow you to choose to send data server to server – depending on the features you need. Most optimization, deep linking, error tracking, and survey tools must be included on the device to use their core features.

In those cases, follow the additional steps to bundle the destination tools.

Now that the SDK is installed and set up, you’re ready to start making calls.

Step 3: Identify Users

The identify method informs Segment who the current user is. It takes a unique User ID, and any optional traits you know about them. You can read more about it in the identify reference.

Here’s what a basic call to identify might look like:

Analytics.shared().identify("f4ca124298", traits: ["name": "Michael Smith", "email": "msmith@example.com"])

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] identify:@"f4ca124298"
                                    traits:@{ @"name": @"Michael Brown",
                                    @"email": @"mbrown@example.com" }];

That call identifies Michael by his unique User ID (f4ca124298, which is the one you know him by in your database) and labels him with name and email traits.

Hold up though! When you put that code in your iOS app, you need to replace those hard-coded trait values with the variables that represent the details of the currently logged-in user.

Once you’ve added an identify call, you’re ready to move on to tracking!

Step 4: Track Actions

The track method tells Segment about the actions your users perform in your app. Every action triggers an “event”, which can also have associated properties. You can read more about track in the track method reference.

To get started, the Segment iOS SDK can automatically track a few important common events, such as Application Installed, Application Updated and Application Opened. You can enable this option during initialization by adding the following lines.

AnalyticsConfiguration configuration = AnalyticsConfiguration(writeKey:"YOUR_WRITE_KEY")
configuration.trackApplicationLifecycleEvents = true
Analytics.setup(with: configuration)

SEGAnalyticsConfiguration *configuration = [SEGAnalyticsConfiguration configurationWithWriteKey:@"YOUR_WRITE_KEY"];
configuration.trackApplicationLifecycleEvents = YES;
[SEGAnalytics setupWithConfiguration:configuration];

You should also track events that indicate success in your mobile app, like Signed Up, Item Purchased or Article Bookmarked. We recommend tracking just a few important events. You can always add more later!

Here’s what a track call might look like when a user signs up:

Analytics.shared().track("Signed Up", properties: ["plan": "Enterprise"])

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] track:@"Signed Up"
                            properties:@{ @"plan": @"Enterprise" }];

That tells us that your user triggered the Signed Up event, and chose your hypothetical 'Enterprise' plan. Properties can be anything you want to record, for example:

Analytics.shared().track("Article Bookmarked", properties: ["title": "Snow Fall", "subtitle": "The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek", "author": "John Branch"])

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] track:@"Article Bookmarked"
                            properties:@{
                                @"title": @"Snow Fall",
                                @"subtitle": @"The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek",
                                @"author": @"John Branch" }];

Once you’ve added a few track calls, you’re set up! You successfully instrumented your app, and can turn on any destination you like from your Segment workspace. However, there are a few important things to know about for mobile app instrumentation, so read on!

Step 5: Flushing

By default, Segment sends (“flushes”) events from the iOS library in batches of 20, however this is configurable. You can set the flushAt value to change the batch size, or you can set it to 1 to disable batching completely.

let configuration = AnalyticsConfiguration(writeKey: "YOUR_WRITE_KEY")
configuration.flushAt = 1
Analytics.setup(with: configuration)

SEGAnalyticsConfiguration *configuration = [SEGAnalyticsConfiguration configurationWithWriteKey:@"YOUR_WRITE_KEY"];
configuration.flushAt = 1;
[SEGAnalytics setupWithConfiguration:configuration];

You can also manually call flush in your code to send all the messages in the queue:

Analytics.shared().alias("glenncoco")
Analytics.shared().flush()

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] alias:@"glenncoco"];
[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] flush]

What’s Next?

We just walked through the quickest way to get started with Segment using Analytics for iOS. You might also want to check out our full Analytics for iOS reference to see what else is possible, or read about the Tracking API methods to get a sense for the bigger picture.