With the recent announcement that CocoaPods is officially in maintenance mode, the iOS development community is entering a transition period. Active development of new features for CocoaPods has stopped, and while security patches and compatibility updates will continue, it’s clear that CocoaPods’ role in iOS development is becoming more limited.

In the survey I presented at the 2024 IEEE/ACM MOBILESoft conference, over 70% of iOS developers already favor Swift Package Manager (SPM) for their dependency management. SPM's tight integration with Xcode and native support from Apple have made it the go-to tool for most developers. The trend is undeniable: SPM is the future of iOS dependency management.

CocoaPods has served us well for over a decade, simplifying the once-complicated process of managing third-party libraries. But as iOS development has evolved, so have the tools. SPM provides a more streamlined and officially supported workflow, making it the preferred option for the majority of iOS developers.

However, not everyone can migrate overnight. For certain frameworks like Unity, React Native, and Flutter, CocoaPods still plays a critical role in managing dependencies. These frameworks rely on CocoaPods for edge cases that SPM has yet to fully cover. So while SPM is the future, CocoaPods is still essential for these specific environments.

For those still relying on CocoaPods, this is kinda a "countdown". While there’s no immediate need to panic, it’s time to start planning your migration strategy. The CocoaPods team will keep the tool functional for the time being, but this is a signal to gradually transition your projects to Swift Package Manager where possible.

It’s important to not be lazy to get it till the last day (like many companies did with Privacy Manifest) as well keep an eye on developments in SPM as Apple continues to enhance its capabilities till the point to be capable to fully replaces CocoaPods edge use case.