louisdh/panelkit

PanelKit is a Swift library for iOS developers that adds a panel system to iPhone and iPad apps. A panel is a floating sub-window inside your app: a small view containing additional content that the user can move, resize, or dock to the side of the screen without leaving the current page. Think of how some desktop apps let you tear off a toolbar or sidebar into its own floating window. PanelKit brings that same idea to iOS. Each panel can appear in one of four ways: as a modal dialog that blocks the rest of the screen, as a popover anchored to a button, as a free-floating window the user can drag anywhere, or as a pinned panel docked to the left or right edge of the app. When a panel is pinned, the main content area automatically shrinks or shifts to make room. The framework also handles the case where a keyboard appears while a panel is open, moving things around automatically so nothing is hidden. The API is protocol-based, meaning you add panel behavior to your existing view controllers without inheriting from a special base class. You implement two protocols: one that describes what a panel looks like and how big it is (PanelContentDelegate), and one that manages which panels exist and where they can be dragged (PanelManager). A basic setup requires only a handful of lines of code, while optional advanced features let you allow multiple pinned panels at once, panel resizing, Expose-style overviews of all open panels, and state restoration so panels reopen where the user left them. The library is available via CocoaPods and Carthage, the two most common iOS dependency managers at the time it was published. It requires iOS 10 or later and Xcode 9 or later. The project is released under the MIT license, which allows free use in commercial and personal projects.