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Is there a way to declare a private property in Objective C? The goal is to benefit from synthesized getters and setters implementing a certain memory management scheme, yet not exposed to public.
An attempt to declare a property within a category leads to an error:
@interface MyClass : NSObject { NSArray *_someArray; } ... @end @interface MyClass (private) @property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *someArray; @end @implementation MyClass (private) @synthesize someArray = _someArray; // ^^^ error here: @synthesize not allowed in a category's implementation @end @implementation MyClass ... @end 
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Objective-C properties offer a way to define the information that a class is intended to encapsulate. As you saw in Properties Control Access to an Object's Values, property declarations are included in the interface for a class, like this: @interface XYZPerson : NSObject.
Accessing an ivar through a getter/setting involves an Objective-C method call, which is much slower (at least 3-4 times) than a "normal" C function call and even a normal C function call would already be multiple times slower than accessing a struct member.
@synthesize tells the compiler to take care of the accessor methods creation i.e it will generate the methods based on property description. It will also generate an instance variable to be used which you can specify as above, as a convention it starts with _(underscore)+propertyName.
I implement my private properties like this.
MyClass.m
@interface MyClass () @property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *someArray; @end @implementation MyClass @synthesize someArray; ... That's all you need.
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