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iOS SDK

Last updated: Dec-24-2025

The Cloudinary iOS SDK provides simple, yet comprehensive image and video upload, transformation, optimization, and delivery capabilities through the Cloudinary APIs, that you can implement using code that integrates seamlessly with your existing iOS application.

SDK security upgrade, June 2025
We recently released an enhanced security version of this SDK that improves the validation and handling of input parameters. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of the SDK to benefit from these security improvements.

How would you like to learn?

Resource Description
iOS quick start Get up and running in five minutes with a walk through of installation, configuration, upload, management and transformations.
Sample projects Explore sample projects to see how to implement Cloudinary functionality such as upload and delivery with transformations.
Cloudinary iOS SDK GitHub repo Explore the source code and see the CHANGELOG for details on all new features and fixes from previous versions.
Video tutorials Watch tutorials relevant to your use cases to learn how to use Cloudinary features.
Cloudinary Academy Try the free Introduction to Cloudinary's iOS SDK online course, where you can learn how to upload, transform and optimize your assets, explore the native video player and deliver images for seamless asset downloading.

Install

Cloudinary's iOS SDK is available as an open-source library. Use one of the following options to install it:

CocoaPods installation

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. Add the Cloudinary dependency to your Podfile:

Note
This version notation uses the highest version available within 5.*

Then, run the command:

This runs a script to install the Cloudinary header files in your Pods roots folder.

Carthage installation

Carthage is a decentralized dependency manager for Cocoa.

  1. Create your Cartfile. Go to the application directory and run the following command:
    touch Cartfile
  2. Add the following line to your Cartfile:
    github "cloudinary/cloudinary_ios" ~> 5.1.0
  3. Run the following command:
    carthage update --use-xcframeworks
Note
This version notation uses the highest version available within 5.*.*

Swift Package Manager installation

The Swift Package Manager is a tool for managing the distribution of Swift code. It's integrated with the Swift build system to automate the process of downloading, compiling, and linking dependencies. Once you have your Swift package set up:

Option 1 - in your code, add Cloudinary to the dependencies value of your Package.swift file:

Option 2 - via your environment:

  1. Select File > Add Packages
  2. Add the repository URL: https://github.com/cloudinary/cloudinary_ios.git
  3. Select "Up to Next Major" with version "5.1.0"

Manual installation

If you prefer not to use a dependency manager, you can add Cloudinary manually by adding it as a submodule to your project.

  1. If your project is not initialized as a git repository, run the command:
    $ git init
  2. To add Cloudinary as a git submodule, run the command:
    $ git submodule add https://github.com/cloudinary/cloudinary_ios.git
  3. Open Terminal and navigate to your project's top level directory.
  4. Drag Cloudinary.xcodeproj into the Project Navigator of your application's Xcode project. It should appear under your application's blue project icon.
  5. Select Cloudinary.xcodeproj and make sure the deployment target matches that of your application target.
  6. Select your application project. Under TARGETS select your application, open the General tab, click on the + button under Embedded Binaries and select Cloudinary.framework.

Configure

Include the Cloudinary iOS classes in your code:

Set required configuration parameters

To use the Cloudinary iOS library you have to configure at least your cloudName. You can find your Cloud name in the Dashboard of the Cloudinary Console, and you can find all of your credentials, including API Key and API Secret, on the API Keys page of the Cloudinary Console Settings.

Notes
  • Most functionality implemented on the client side doesn't require authentication, so only your cloud_name is required to be configured, and not your API key or secret.

    Your API secret should never be exposed on the client side, so if you want to use signed uploads or generate delivery signatures, you'll also need server-side code, for which you can use one of our backend SDKs.

  • For backward compatibility reasons, the default value of the optional secure configuration parameter is false. However, for most modern applications, it's recommended to configure the secure parameter to true to ensure that your transformation URLs are always generated as HTTPS.

The entry point of the library is the CLDCloudinary object, which initializes with an instance of CLDConfiguration with the desired parameters, for example:

Alternatively, you can pass a cloudinaryURL in the form cloudinary://@[CLOUD_NAME]?{URL config parameters}, for example:

Set additional configuration parameters

In addition to the required configuration parameters, you can define a number of optional configuration parameters if relevant.

Note
By default, URLs generated with this SDK include an appended SDK-usage query parameter. Cloudinary tracks aggregated data from this parameter to improve future SDK versions. We don't collect any individual data. If needed, you can disable the urlAnalytics configuration option. Learn more.
Help us improve our SDK
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Use

Once you've installed and configured the iOS SDK, you can use it for:

  • Uploading files to your product environment: You can upload any files, not only images and videos, set your own naming conventions and overwrite policies, moderate and tag your assets on upload, and much more. See example
  • Transforming and optimizing images and videos: Keeping your original assets intact in your product environment, you can deliver different versions of your media - different sizes, formats, with effects and overlays, customized for your needs. See example

Quick example: File upload

The following Swift code uses an unsigned upload preset to upload the dog.mp4 video. When the video upload is complete, the specified notification URL receives details about the uploaded media asset.

Learn more about upload

Quick example: Transform and optimize

Take a look at the following transformation code and the image it delivers:

sample transformation

This relatively simple code performs all of the following on the original front_face.jpg image before delivering it:

  • Crop to a 150x150 thumbnail using face-detection gravity to automatically determine the location for the crop
  • Round the corners with a 20 pixel radius
  • Apply a sepia effect
  • Overlay the Cloudinary logo on the southeast corner of the image (with a slight offset). Scale the logo overlay down to a 50 pixel width, with increased brightness and partial transparency (opacity = 60%).
  • Rotate the resulting image (including the overlay) by 10 degrees
  • Convert and deliver the image in PNG format (the originally uploaded image was a JPG)

And here's the URL that's automatically generated and included in an image tag from the above code:

In a similar way, you can transform a video.

Learn more about transformations

iOS SDK features

The iOS SDK provides the following key features:

Sample projects

Take a look at the iOS sample projects page to help you get started integrating Cloudinary into your iOS application.

Related topics

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