New Rides SDKs for iOS and Android

By Ty Smith

When a ride is always at your fingertips, the experience can be magical. That’s one reason why we’ve already seen thousands of apps integrate Uber into their services — including Foursquare, Moovit, Paperless Post and Amazon Echo.

From the beginning we’ve been working to build a full-featured developer platform that sparks creativity, whether you want to launch a custom API implementation or simply drop Uber into your app with the Ride Request Widget. But functionality on its own isn’t enough: speed matters too. That’s why we built new Rides SDKs for Android and iOS — to make Uber integrations easier for your end users to enjoy, and faster for your development team to implement.

The new Rides SDKs improve the user experience in your app through two key features: Single Sign On and redesigned Ride Request Buttons.

Single Sign On (iOS and Android) streamlines the Uber sign-in process within your app. Riders have come to expect that using Uber means “tap a button, get a ride.” Now you can give them the same instant gratification. If a user is already signed into Uber on their phone, they won’t have to sign in again to get a ride through your app.

We’ve also updated our Ride Request Buttons (iOS and Android) to dynamically display real-time information such as ride ETA and price estimate. We see results improve when we give users more information about their Uber ride. Now we’re baking those insights into our button design, providing key information to potential riders right when they’re deciding how to get from point A to point B.

The new Rides SDKs don’t just provide a better user experience — they make for a better development experience too. Using raw RESTful interfaces in mobile development can be tedious and error prone. Our updated SDKs provide authenticated interfaces to natively access the full suite of Uber APIs. This makes for straightforward integrations that feel right at home whether you’re building for Android or iOS.

Additionally, Single Sign On lets you use your access token to access Uber’s privileged scope endpoints. This removes a large barrier to entry, as you no longer need to stand up a web service to complete the OAuth flow for these type of APIs.

The new Rides SDKs make adding Uber to your mobile app faster than ever, improving your user experience along the way. If you’ve been waiting to start an Uber integration, take a look through our new documentation. It’s easy to get started.

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