What is the role of the Podfile in managing dependencies in an iOS project?

The Podfile is used in iOS projects to manage dependencies via CocoaPods — a popular library manager. It describes third-party libraries that the project should use, as well as the versions of these libraries. When running the pod install command, CocoaPods reads the Podfile, downloads, and integrates the specified dependencies into the Xcode project, simplifying the management of external components and their updates.