Apple SDK · iOS · macOS · tvOS · watchOS · visionOS
Every framework in the Apple platform SDKs, from the declarative UI of SwiftUI to the on-device intelligence of FoundationModels. Browse by technology area, filter by platform, and drill into any framework to see its public Swift API.
UI and App Frameworks provide the building blocks for constructing an application's interface and managing its lifecycle across Apple platforms. They define views, controls, layout, and event handling—spanning the declarative SwiftUI model and the imperative UIKit and AppKit frameworks—along with supporting frameworks for charts, widgets, Live Activities, web content, and platform-specific surfaces such as CarPlay and watchOS. Together these frameworks render content, respond to user input, and present app data wherever the system surfaces it.
App Extensions and System Integration frameworks let an app extend beyond its own process and surface its actions, content, and UI throughout the operating system. They provide the extension points and entry-point protocols that integrate apps with Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, notifications, Screen Time, the Files app, Safari, and other system experiences, and they define how out-of-process extensions are declared, hosted, and managed. Through these frameworks, apps expose intents and entities, deliver notifications, participate in parental controls and device management, and run code in dedicated extension contexts on behalf of the system.
The Graphics, Imaging & Compositing area provides the frameworks that draw, process, and present visual content across Apple platforms. These frameworks span 2D vector drawing and text layout, GPU rendering and compute, image reading and processing, and layer-based animation and compositing. Together they let your app generate pixels efficiently, manage color and image data, and composite the results onto the screen.
The Games & 3D area provides the frameworks for building games and rendering three-dimensional content across Apple platforms. Its frameworks supply 2D and 3D scene graphs, model asset import and description, game logic such as pathfinding, state machines, and AI, and input from game controllers, along with Game Center services for leaderboards, achievements, and matchmaking. SwiftUI bridges and cross-import overlays integrate these engines into modern app interfaces, including spatial tabletop experiences on visionOS.
The Audio area provides the frameworks for capturing, processing, routing, and playing sound across Apple platforms. Its APIs span the full stack, from low-level hardware abstraction, format conversion, and real-time audio units to high-level engines for playback, recording, mixing, and spatialized 3D audio. The area also includes services for MIDI communication, media library access, and integration with Apple Music and the system Now Playing experience.
This area provides the frameworks for capturing, processing, presenting, and managing photo and video media across Apple platforms. Its frameworks span the full media pipeline, from low-level timing and pixel-buffer primitives and hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding to high-level capture sessions, editing, playback UI, and access to the user's photo library. Together they let apps record from cameras and the screen, compose and edit audiovisual assets, play media with system controls and Picture-in-Picture, and read or modify photos and videos with privacy-preserving access.
The AR & Spatial frameworks let you build augmented reality and immersive spatial experiences across iOS and visionOS. They track the device's position in the real world, detect surfaces and objects, render and simulate 3D content with an entity-component model, and compose scenes from Universal Scene Description assets. Supporting frameworks provide spatial math primitives, Metal-based stereoscopic rendering, and room scanning that turns physical environments into parametric 3D models.
The Machine Learning & AI area provides the frameworks for adding intelligence to your app, running models on device to protect user privacy and reduce latency. With these frameworks you integrate trained Core ML models, prompt on-device large language models for structured generation, and apply task-specific capabilities such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and sound analysis. You can also train and evaluate custom models, generate images and translations, and accelerate neural-network workloads on the GPU.
The Maps & Location area lets your app determine where a device is and present geographic information in context. Its frameworks report the device's coordinate, heading, and proximity to regions and beacons under privacy-aware authorization, and display interactive maps with annotations, overlays, routing, and search. SwiftUI integrations and ready-made controls let you embed maps and request location access declaratively.
The Health & Fitness area provides the frameworks for storing, querying, and presenting a person's health and fitness data on Apple platforms. HealthKit acts as the central, privacy-protected store for samples, workouts, clinical records, and characteristics, while companion frameworks build and schedule custom workouts, display activity rings and authorization prompts, and detect safety events such as vehicle crashes. Apps use these frameworks to record activity, surface health insights, and respond to physical and environmental conditions on the user's behalf.
The Networking & Connectivity frameworks provide the APIs your app uses to send and receive data across networks and to discover and communicate with nearby devices. They span modern transport-level connections over TCP, UDP, and TLS; peer-to-peer links over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and inspection and configuration of network paths, reachability, and interfaces. Higher-level frameworks add system extensions such as VPNs and content filters, device-to-device messaging, and discovery of local services and peers.
The Security, Privacy & Authentication frameworks protect user data and verify identity across the platform. They provide cryptographic primitives, keychain and certificate management, trust evaluation, and biometric and passcode authentication, along with higher-level flows such as Sign in with Apple, passkeys, and credential authorization. Additional frameworks handle privacy authorization, code-signing requirements, smart cards, and directory and account services.
This area provides the frameworks apps use to model, persist, and query structured data on device and to synchronize it across a user's devices through iCloud. It spans local object-graph and model-based persistence, columnar data processing, file-system and storage integration, content indexing for search, and cloud storage with record sharing and subscriptions. Together these frameworks let you store app data durably and keep it consistent and discoverable across the platform.
This area provides the base layer of every Apple app: the core value types, collections, strings, dates, files, URLs, and networking that higher-level frameworks build on, together with the language and system primitives beneath them. Its frameworks define how work executes concurrently through actors, async/await, queues, and atomics, and how programs interact with the operating system via low-level system calls, logging, compression, and inter-process communication. Together they establish the data model, execution model, and system-services foundation shared across all platforms.
The Device, Sensors & Hardware frameworks give apps access to the physical capabilities of Apple devices and the external accessories they connect to. They read motion, environmental, and telephony sensors, communicate over Bluetooth, NFC, Ultra Wideband, and USB, drive haptic feedback, and discover, pair, and control accessories ranging from smart-home devices to digital car keys. Together they bridge software to the hardware around it, from on-device sensing to home and automotive automation.
These frameworks let your app access the user's contacts and participate in the system's communication channels for calls, messaging, and shared experiences. They provide programmatic and UI-based access to contact records, integration with the system call interface for VoIP and push-to-talk, composition and filtering of messages, and coordination of SharePlay sessions and content shared in Messages. Each capability is gated by user permission and surfaced through the standard system interfaces.
The Commerce, Payments & Ads frameworks let your app sell digital and physical goods, move money, and measure the advertising that drives installs. Use them to offer in-app purchases and subscriptions, accept Apple Pay and contactless payments, manage Wallet passes and payment cards, and access a person's financial data. They also provide privacy-preserving ad attribution, alternative app marketplaces, and tools for testing transactions during development.
This area provides the frameworks that make apps usable by everyone and adaptable to every audience. Its APIs expose content to assistive technologies such as VoiceOver and braille displays, describe charts and images, and manage system media accessibility preferences including caption appearance, audio descriptions, music haptics, and flashing-lights mitigation. Together they let an app respect each person's accessibility and localization settings without bypassing the platform's built-in support.
The Developer Tools & Diagnostics area provides the frameworks you use to validate, measure, and debug your software across Apple platforms. Its frameworks let you write and run unit, performance, and UI tests, attach rich values and images to test results, and exercise App Intents and intelligence-powered features in isolation. They also collect on-device performance, power, and crash diagnostics, read unified logging entries, and capture and symbolicate runtime backtraces for analysis.
This area provides direct access to the lowest layers of the operating system, exposing the Darwin/BSD C system layer, Mach kernel interfaces, and the Objective-C runtime to your code. Its frameworks let you communicate with hardware and device drivers, manage disks and kernel extensions, and create and run virtual machines on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It also preserves legacy and bridging technologies—such as Carbon, OpenCL, and scripting overlays—for maintaining and migrating older software.