// the find
dopebase/messenger-iOS-chat-swift-firestore
Messenger Clone - Real-time iOS Chat with Firebase Firestore written in Swift
A Swift iOS chat app that uses MessageKit for the message UI and Firebase Firestore for storage and real-time sync, styled after Facebook Messenger. It is a sample from iOS App Templates, aimed at iOS developers who want a drop-in chat screen for an existing app or a starting point they will rewrite.
- Building the message list on MessageKit hands bubble layout, the input bar, and keyboard avoidance to a maintained library. For a chat screen, that is most of the fiddly UIKit work.
- The Core folder is separate from the app target, and the README shows a usable embedding seam: one ATCChatChannel, one ATCUser, one ATCChatUIConfiguration, and one ATCChatThreadViewController to present. That is easier to lift into another app than most sample chats.
- Firestore listeners provide the real-time updates, so a basic one-to-one or group chat needs no socket server or custom backend.
- The README says the project only builds with Xcode's Legacy Build System. A clone that fails on the current Xcode is a bad first experience, and the README does not say why the build breaks.
- Setup relies on `pod update`, which moves every CocoaPods dependency to its latest version instead of the one the code was written against. A fresh clone can fail or behave differently from the screenshots.
- The README never mentions Firestore security rules. Because clients read and write Firestore directly, the rules are the only thing keeping conversations private, and a clone that ships with permissive rules is an open chat room.
- The last push was in November 2025, and the README still carries leftovers from the template vendor, such as a line saying the project was created with React Native Templates. Treat it as a reference implementation rather than a base for production code.