How to install cocoapods in Mac?

CocoaPods is built with Ruby and is installable with the default Ruby available on macOS. We recommend you use the default ruby.

Using the default Ruby install can require you to use sudo when installing gems. Further installation instructions are in the guides.

POD Install

[ 1 ] Open terminal and type:

sudo gem install cocoapods

Gem will get installed in Ruby inside System library. Or try on 10.11 Mac OSX El Capitan, type:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin cocoapods

If there is an error "activesupport requires Ruby version >= 2.xx", then install latest activesupport first by typing in terminal.

sudo gem install activesupport -v 4.2.6

[ 2 ] After installation, there will be a lot of messages, read them and if no error found, it means cocoapods installation is done. Next, you need to setup the cocoapods master repo. Type in terminal:

pod setup

And wait it will download the master repo. The size is very big (370.0MB at Dec 2016). So it can be a while. You can track of the download by opening Activity and goto Network tab and search for git-remote-https. Alternatively you can try adding verbose to the command like so:

pod setup --verbose

[ 3 ] Once done it will output "Setup Complete", and you can create your XCode project and save it.

[ 4 ] Then in terminal cd to "your XCode project root directory" (where your .xcodeproj file resides) and type:

pod init

[ 5 ] Then open your project's podfile by typing in terminal:

open -a Xcode Podfile

[ 6 ] Your Podfile will get open in text mode. Initially there will be some default commands in there. Here is where you add your project's dependencies. For example, in the podfile, type

pod 'AFNetworking', '0.9.1'

(this line is an example of adding the AFNetworking library to your project).

Other tips:

Uncomment platform :ios, '9.0' Uncomment user_frameworks! if you're using Swift

When you are done editing the podfile, save it and close Xcode.

[ 7 ] Then install pods into your project by typing in terminal:

pod install

Depending how many libraries you added to your podfile for your project, the time to complete this varies. Once completed, there will be a message that says

"Pod installation complete! There are X dependencies from the Podfile and X total pods installed."

Now close your Xcode project. Then locate and open the .xcworkspace Xcode project file and start coding. (You should no longer open the xcodeproj file)