RFAboutView is an easy, drop-in solution to display copyright, support, privacy and other information while also automatically crediting the developers of third-party Cocoapods. RFAboutView uses AutoLayout and can be used both for iPhone and iPad apps.

Note: This is the Objective-C version of RFAboutView. There is also a version written in Swift available. Apart from minor implementation differences, both versions have identical feature sets and behave the same way.

Its main features are:

• Displays app name and copyright information.
• Displays an optional link to a website, opening in Safari.
• Displays an optional link to an Email address.
• If the user clicks on the Email link, a MFMailComposeViewController opens, (optionally) pre-filled with diagnostic information useful for support: App name and version, current device, current iOS version, preferred device language.
• Displays additional buttons with further information (for example your TOS or Privacy Policy) that you can specify.
• Displays acknowledgements for all Cocoapods used in the project. The acknowledgements file automatically created by Cocoapods is used for this, requiring almost no work on your part. See "Automatic acknowledgements" below for more information.
• Clean and modern design with lots of customisation options.

To use RFAboutView, import the header:

#import "RFAboutViewController.h"`

After that, initialise a RFAboutViewController and add it to a UINavigationController. The RFAboutViewController must always be used in navigation stack. Here is a complete example:

// First create a UINavigationController (or use your existing one).
// The RFAboutView needs to be wrapped in a UINavigationController.
    
UINavigationController *aboutNavigation = [UINavigationController new];

// Initialise the RFAboutView:
    
RFAboutViewController *aboutView = [[RFAboutViewController alloc] initWithAppName:nil appVersion:nil appBuild:nil copyrightHolderName:@"ExampleApp, Inc." contactEmail:@"[email protected]" titleForEmail:@"Contact us" websiteURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://example.com"] titleForWebsiteURL:@"Our Website" andPublicationYear:nil];
    
// Set some additional options:
aboutView.headerBackgroundColor = [UIColor blackColor];
aboutView.headerTextColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
aboutView.blurStyle = UIBlurEffectStyleDark;
aboutView.headerBackgroundImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"about_header_bg.jpg"];

// Add an additional button:
[aboutView addAdditionalButtonWithTitle:@"Privacy Policy" andContent:@"Here's the privacy policy"];

// Add the aboutView to the NavigationController:
[aboutNavigation setViewControllers:@[aboutView]];
    
// Present the navigation controller:
[self presentViewController:aboutNavigation animated:YES completion:nil];

Every time you run pod update or pod install, Cocoapods automatically generates a file containing copyright and license information for all Cocoapods used in the project. RFAboutView uses this file to display the acknowledgements. To use it, copy the file Pods-<Target Name>-acknowledgements.plist found in the <Project Root>/Pods/Target Support Files/Pods-<Target Name> directory to your project and call it Acknowledgements.plist. You can also use a different name if you would like – if you do, set the acknowledgementsFilename property of RFAboutViewController to the new name (without plist).

To automate this, you can add the following snippet to your Podfile:

post_install do |installer|
  require 'fileutils'
  FileUtils.cp_r('Pods/Target Support Files/Pods-<Target Name>/Pods-<Target Name>-acknowledgements.plist', '<Project Dir>/Acknowledgements.plist', :remove_destination => true)
end

Note that the directory names can differ based on the setup of your project and whether or not you are using different targets. Check with your local project directory and change the snippet accordingly. Also don't forget to add the Acknowledgements.plist file to your Xcode project.

If you want to localise RFAboutView for your app or if you would like to change the default texts, you can use the RFAboutView.strings file in the example app as a template.

RFAboutView contains many customization options. See the file RFAboutViewController.h for a full documentation.

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

RFAboutView requires iOS 8.0.

RFAboutView is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "RFAboutView", '~> 1.0.1'

René Fouquet, [email protected]

Check out my blog: fouquet.me

Follow me on Twitter at @renefouquet

RFAboutView is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.