...There are lots of ways to write animations for UICollectionView, but using a UICollectionViewLayout subclass is by far the simplest one. And it doesn't break any of your existing code. You can still use your UICollectionView subclass and you don't need to change your UICollectionViewCell. Just plug and enjoy. Most of the built-in animators work best in Paging mode and they have additional parameters that you can tweak for better transitions. You can also write your own animators by implementing the protocol LayoutAttributesAnimator. AnimatedCollectionViewLayout is available under the MIT license.