Make a simple fade in animation in Swift?

Swift only solution

Similar to Luca's anwer, I use a UIView extension. Compared to his solution I use DispatchQueue.main.async to make sure animations are done on the main thread, alpha parameter for fading to a specific value and optional duration parameters for cleaner code.

extension UIView {
  func fadeTo(_ alpha: CGFloat, duration: TimeInterval = 0.3) {
    DispatchQueue.main.async {
      UIView.animate(withDuration: duration) {
        self.alpha = alpha
      }
    }
  }

  func fadeIn(_ duration: TimeInterval = 0.3) {
    fadeTo(1.0, duration: duration)
  }

  func fadeOut(_ duration: TimeInterval = 0.3) {
    fadeTo(0.0, duration: duration)
  }
}

How to use it:

// fadeIn() - always animates to alpha = 1.0
yourView.fadeIn()     // uses default duration of 0.3
yourView.fadeIn(1.0)  // uses custom duration (1.0 in this example)

// fadeOut() - always animates to alpha = 0.0
yourView.fadeOut()    // uses default duration of 0.3
yourView.fadeOut(1.0) // uses custom duration (1.0 in this example)

// fadeTo() - used if you want a custom alpha value
yourView.fadeTo(0.5)  // uses default duration of 0.3
yourView.fadeTo(0.5, duration: 1.0)

The problem is that you're trying start the animation too early in the view controller's lifecycle. In viewDidLoad, the view has just been created, and hasn't yet been added to the view hierarchy, so attempting to animate one of its subviews at this point produces bad results.

What you really should be doing is continuing to set the alpha of the view in viewDidLoad (or where you create your views), and then waiting for the viewDidAppear: method to be called. At this point, you can start your animations without any issue.

override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidAppear(animated)

    UIView.animate(withDuration: 1.5) {
        self.myFirstLabel.alpha = 1.0
        self.myFirstButton.alpha = 1.0
        self.mySecondButton.alpha = 1.0
    }
}

0x7ffffff's answer is ok and definitely exhaustive.

As a plus, I suggest you to make an UIView extension, in this way:

public extension UIView {

  /**
  Fade in a view with a duration

  - parameter duration: custom animation duration
  */
  func fadeIn(duration duration: NSTimeInterval = 1.0) {
    UIView.animateWithDuration(duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 1.0
    })
  }

  /**
  Fade out a view with a duration

  - parameter duration: custom animation duration
  */
  func fadeOut(duration duration: NSTimeInterval = 1.0) {
    UIView.animateWithDuration(duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 0.0
    })
  }

}

Swift-3

/// Fade in a view with a duration
/// 
/// Parameter duration: custom animation duration
func fadeIn(withDuration duration: TimeInterval = 1.0) {
    UIView.animate(withDuration: duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 1.0
    })
}

/// Fade out a view with a duration
///
/// - Parameter duration: custom animation duration
func fadeOut(withDuration duration: TimeInterval = 1.0) {
    UIView.animate(withDuration: duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 0.0
    })
}

Swift-5

public extension UIView {

/**
 Fade in a view with a duration
 
 - parameter duration: custom animation duration
 */
 func fadeIn(duration: TimeInterval = 1.0) {
     UIView.animate(withDuration: duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 1.0
     })
 }

/**
 Fade out a view with a duration
 
 - parameter duration: custom animation duration
 */
func fadeOut(duration: TimeInterval = 1.0) {
    UIView.animate(withDuration: duration, animations: {
        self.alpha = 0.0
    })
  }

}

In this way you can do this wherever in your code:

let newImage = UIImage(named: "")
newImage.alpha = 0 // or newImage.fadeOut(duration: 0.0)
self.view.addSubview(newImage)
... 
newImage.fadeIn()

Code reuse is important!