Setting our app apart can be tricky. We don't want to deviate too far from established conventions, but we don't want to blend in to the crowd either. Small amounts of "polish" to an app's UI can go a long way to making it feel special.

Today we'll check out one more tool in our arsenal for doing this. It's a library from Andrea Mazzini called SubtleVolume.

The idea here is to improve upon the default, screen-obscuring, built-in volume overlay. iOS's system interface is fine for most apps, but often it can get in the way of the content the underlying app is presenting.

SubtleVolume solves this by providing an elegant volume view that we can put anywhere on the screen. Let's try it out:

let volume = SubtleVolume(style: .Plain)

volume.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 20, width: w, height: 4)
volume.barTintColor = .whiteColor()
volume.barBackgroundColor = UIColor(white: 1.0, alpha: 0.3)
volume.animation = .FadeIn

view.addSubview(volume)

Now, the view will automatically hide/show when the user changes the volume, Neat!

More info about SubtleVolume can be found at git.io/subtlevolume