Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) (Udacity)

Offered by Udacity,
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) (Udacity)

Perform Asynchronous Operations in iOS. Many times your apps need to run lengthy operations in the background, like downloading data, but you don't want these operations to interfere with your UI. Apple's GCD (long form: Grand Central Dispatch) framework allows you to create asynchronous apps for iOS, ensuring smooth a smooth user experience in situations like the one mentioned above.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Udacity's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

What you will learn

  • Closures Reloaded

Closures in Swift
Properties of closures that we bypassed in our Swift Syntax course

  • Grand Central Dispatch

Apple's open source library Grand Central Dispatch
How GCD allows you to send tasks to the background and (equally important) to the foreground
How and what you can send to the background and what must always run in the foreground

  • Sample App

Create a simple App that downloads huge images (the easiest way to block the UI)
Send this network lengthy task to the background in 2 different ways
Run closures in the background
Design methods that take a completion closure

Prerequisites and requirements
To be successful in this course, you should be comfortable programming in Swift, and understand closures. You can learn these skills in our Swift Syntax course.
Familiarity with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Matrix are also recommended in order to understand the jokes in this course.

Why take this course?
Almsot all Apps consume data from web services, and therefore must use background threads for these lengthy operations.
Even though we provide a black box solution for concurrency in the iOS Networking with Swift course, it is important that you understand how concurrency works in iOS.
This knowledge is vital to deliver Apps that won't be rejected from the App Store and also provide a great user experience.
On top of that, GCD is a frequent topic in iOS job interviews.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Server side JavaScript with Node.js (Coursera) Coursera
NIIT StackRoute

Server side JavaScript with Node.js (Coursera)

Have you ever wondered how you are able to do net banking or book a ticket online? Which technology is adopted for applications used in different businesses? Backend technology acts as a backbone to every web application. It typically includes all services, data interfaces and their core business logic. This course will introduce you to the Node.js environment and help you design and develop backend or server-side of the application. It also provides you with hands on coding exercises and will enable you to build JavaScript programs and test and execute them in the Node.js environment.

Jul 27th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Learn iOS Programming Building a To-Do Utility App  (Eduonix) Eduonix
Eduonix Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Learn iOS Programming Building a To-Do Utility App (Eduonix)

Apple has become an important name in digital world, with its line of smartphones, tablets and even smart watches. The devices are powered by the company’s very own herculean operating system, the iOS9. The new features offered in the latest iteration requires new apps to cater to these devices. No idea how to build an app though? No problem! This is where this mini project course comes in. The course will teach you how to create an app for iOS 9 from scratch, along with teaching you important fundamentals of iOS 9 and Swift programming.

Self Paced
Self-Paced
Mobile Applications Development (saylor.org) Saylor Academy
Saylor.org

Mobile Applications Development (saylor.org)

Technology continues to evolve and provide us with increasingly powerful mobile devices. As a result, applications that can run on a browser must also be written such that they are compatible with mobile devices, the majority of which are now web-enabled. Meanwhile, there is an increasing demand for native applications that can be downloaded to and run on mobile devices. This course will address these trends, teaching you to think about the unique design and deployment issues that must be taken into consideration when developing applications for mobile devices.

Self Paced
Self-Paced
Asynchronous JavaScript Requests (Udacity) Udacity
Udacity

Asynchronous JavaScript Requests (Udacity)

Fetch Data Asynchronously. This course covers everything a developer needs to know to asynchronously send and receive data in their web applications. You'll dive into how asynchronous requests work by using the XHR object to create and send asynchronous requests for image and news article data. Then, you'll see how you can perform async requests more easily using third-party libraries and APIs like jQuery's Ajax and the Fetch API.

Self Paced
Self-Paced
Learn To Build Your First Professional iOS App (Eduonix) Eduonix
Eduonix Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Learn To Build Your First Professional iOS App (Eduonix)

iOS 9 is the latest powerful operating system that has been released by Apple, to support under-the-hood operations for its devices. With Apple holding a significant chunk of smartphone and tablet sales, it is important to create apps that cater to the device holders. And with our new mini course, you can learn how to. Learn how to start creating apps for Apple devices, by creating a complete and comprehensive Quiz application, with a full UI and other functionalities.

Self Paced
Self-Paced
Games, Sensors and Media (Coursera) Coursera
University of California, Irvine

Games, Sensors and Media (Coursera)

You will learn to make fluid digital interactive experiences that are suitable for gaming and use the advanced sensor hardware built into the iPhone and iPad. This includes drawing 2D graphics, playing sounds and music, integrating with Game Center, the iOS physics engine and detecting device orientation and location.

Aug 3rd 2026
4 Weeks
Smart Device & Mobile Emerging Technologies (Coursera) Coursera
Yonsei University

Smart Device & Mobile Emerging Technologies (Coursera)

In this course, the start-of-the-art smartphone and smart watch technology and components in addition to the global market trends and future forecasts are introduced. Since everybody uses smartphones and smart watches, knowing the details about the most globally used electronic device will definitely help you in all aspects of new product and app design & development, as well as business planning.

Jul 27th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Firebase in a Weekend: iOS (Udacity) Udacity
Udacity,Google

Firebase in a Weekend: iOS (Udacity)

Building a Realtime Chat App. In this course, you’ll learn how to use Firebase. Firebase is app development platform that provides developers a variety of tools and a scalable infrastructure to build high quality apps. We’ll begin by showing you how easy it is to read and write almost any data to Firebase. After that, we’ll teach you how to allow users to login, have data associated with them and send them notifications. You’ll learn how to use Firebase’s Security and Rules language to secure and add permissions to your data.

Self Paced
Self-Paced