The Apple Developer Tools are a suite of software tools from

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

to aid in making software dynamic titles for the

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

platforms. The developer tools were formerly included on macOS install media, but are now exclusively distributed over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

Xcode Xcode is a suite of developer tools for building apps on Apple devices. It includes an integrated development environment (IDE) of the same name for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It w ...

is available as a free download from the

Mac App Store The Mac App Store (also known as the App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" eve ...

Applications

Applet Launcher

A graphical interface for JavaScript's Plug-in, which aids developers by demonstrating how Java applets perform on macOS. Provides tools to adjust the performance, behavior and user experience in applets in development.

Audio Unit Lab

A graphic presentation of audio units helping software developers to examine their results in decibels. AU Lab can be used to test audio units, conduct live mixing, and playback of audio content. Audio units are controlled visually with the audio unit's graphic interface and touch screen.

Computer Hardware Understanding Development Tools

A set of software tools, collectively Computer Hardware Understanding Development Tools (CHUD Tools) measure software performance on macOS, to aid in optimizing. Also provides hardware system benchmarks.

Core Image Fun House

Used in testing

Core Image Core Image is a pixel-accurate, near-realtime, non-destructive image processing technology in Mac OS X. Implemented as part of the QuartzCore framework of Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Core Image provides a plugin-based architecture for applying filt ...

units, which function similar to

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

filters. Each has a specific action, with parameters customize the action. Showcases Core Image, a technology introduced in

Mac OS X 10.4 Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005, for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Incl ...

, supported by newer graphic hardware.

CrashReporterPrefs

A developer utility for setting report parameters for Apple's

Crash Reporter A crash reporter is usually a system software whose function is to identify reporting crash details and to alert when there are crashes, in production or on development / testing environments. Crash reports often include data such as stack trac ...

application. * Basic: Shows a dialog asking the user what to do. * Developer: Provides additional debug info and automatically shows the mail to Apple window. * Server: Runs silent, but keeps all the logs. * None: Disables the dialog prompt. Crash reports are neither displayed nor logged.

FileMerge

A staple of macOS's developer tools since the days of

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

, FileMerge graphically compares two or more versions of a file. True to its name, FileMerge allows the user to easily merge the two or more versions into one file. The utility is often used to track changes to source code. macOS's command provides the ability to launch FileMerge from the command line. The parameter can be used for three-way merging.

Help Indexer

Creates an

index file A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data withou ...

for the macOS built-in

Help Viewer This is a list of built-in apps and system components developed by Apple Inc. for macOS that come bundled by default or are installed through a system update. Many of the default programs found on macOS have counterparts on Apple's other operat ...

icns Browser

Views the resources for an .icns file, displaying the Mini, Small, Large, Huge, Thumbnail & Tile sizes in all

color depth Color depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bit ...

s and

masks A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment, and often employed for rituals and rites. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes, ...

Icon Composer

Icon Composer was an

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

editor that does not have any editing features other than composing

Apple Icon Image The Apple Icon Image format (.icns) is an icon format used in Apple Inc.'s macOS. It supports icons of 16 × 16, 32 × 32, 48 × 48, 128 × 128, 256 × 256, 512 × 512 points at 1x and 2x scale, with both 1- and 8-bit alpha channels and multipl ...

files and Windows ICO files. External editors must do all the image manipulation, then the results may be imported into the converter to create the finished icon. As of Xcode 8.2, Icon Composer is no longer available in Additional Tools, as it cannot create high resolution icons. Apple recommends using the command-line utility iconutil, which ships with macOS. A new version of Icon Composer was reintroduced with WWDC 2025 for creating Liquid Glass icons.

Instruments

Instruments Instrument may refer to: Science and technology * Flight instruments, the devices used to measure the speed, altitude, and pertinent flight angles of various kinds of aircraft * Laboratory equipment, the measuring tools used in a scientific lab ...

is a GUI for tracing framework

DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released un ...

from Sun's

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

. It is used to profile time usage, memory allocations, system activity, call trace analysis, GPU performance analysis, energy logging (on iOS devices) etc.

Jar Bundler

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

tool that aids in packaging an application's component files into a single double-clickable application. Properties can be modified to optimize the code.

MallocDebug

Assistance for assessing memory usage and detecting

memory leak In computer science, a memory leak is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations in a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an objec ...

s in programs. Assesses an application's memory usage by monitoring a user as they interact with an application, which allows MallocDebug to build a memory profile that unfortunately is limited in size.

OpenGL Driver Monitor

Real time access to the inner workings of the graphics processing unit. Runs locally or over a network using Bonjour which is less likely to interfere with the statistics it is gathering with the exception of some disk fragmentation devices.

OpenGL Profiler

This tool assists developers in debugging and optimizing

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

usage under macOS. Supported features: * Launch or attach to an application * Breakpoints and execution control * Error detection including thread safety checks * Scripts * Buffer views * Resource viewing/editing * Statistics gathering * OpenGL call traces with stack traces and timings

OpenGL Shader Builder

An integrated environment to develop and debug

GPU programs (

Shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene—a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of s ...

s) under macOS. Features supported by OpenGL Shader Builder: * Realtime entry * Preview window with shaders applied to a textured plane, sphere or teapot * Example shaders * Syntax checking * Debugging and analysis of vertex / fragment programs * Export to Xcode One notable feature is 'Export to Xcode'. A sample Xcode project is created with C source code to initialize

(using the GLUT library) and run the shader program. Note that this program is no longer recommended for editing GLSL shaders as "GLSLEditorSample," available as an example program, is generally regarded as superior.

PackageMaker

Creates application .pkg installer bundles for installing applications using the

Installer Installation (or setup) of a computer program (including device drivers and plugins), is the act of making the program ready for execution. Installation refers to the particular configuration of software or hardware with a view to making it usabl ...

application.

Pixie

magnifying glass A magnifying glass is a convex lens—usually mounted in a frame with a handle—that is used to produce a magnified image of an object. A magnifying glass can also be used to focus light, such as to concentrate the Sun's radiation to create ...

application for magnifying small sections of the computer's screen, centered around the mouse cursor, giving the user a detailed view of the screen, as well as the

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

coordinates of the mouse. Provides several levels of zoom, "locking" the image under the mouse for closer examination, and saves the magnified image one of several formats. Helps ensure visual elements are aligned precisely.

Property List Editor

Edits application preference

plist In the macOS, iOS, NeXTSTEP, and GNUstep programming frameworks, property list files are files that store serialized objects. Property list files use the filename extension .plist, and thus are often referred to as p-list files. Property lis ...

files. As of Xcode 4, Property List Editor is no longer included as a separate application and all editing of plist files is done within Xcode. The last stand-alone version was version 5.3 in Xcode 3.2.6.

Quartz Composer

visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS), also known as diagrammatic programming, graphical programming or block coding, is a programming language that lets users create computer program, programs by ...

for processing and rendering data. Using

Core Video Core Video is the video processing model employed by macOS. It links the process of decompressing frames from a video source to the rest of the Quartz technologies for image rendering and composition. Both QuickTime X and QuickTime 7 depend ...

, and other technologies to build an

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

and serves as a simple visual programming paradigm. Quartz Composer is a core technology of the macOS. Quartz Composer creations work in any

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

-aware application (beginning with Mac OS X 10.4), from the Quartz Composer application, or embedded into

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

applications. Quartz Composer has many similarities to

Max/MSP Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, pe ...

although its primary usage is for graphical rather than audio processing. Offers the ability to construct interactive video compositions that react to audio or

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

signals and can be played from any

aware application. Pierre-Olivier Latour originally developed the predecessor to Quartz Composer under the name PixelShox Studio. A resurgence in interest in Quartz Composer has come about, as the

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

design team has been showcasing their utilization of the program to prototype interactions that they couldn't have otherwise depicted with flat mockups in

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

Repeat After Me

Optimizes the performance of the built-in

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conv ...

software for macOS. Tests the operating system's

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

translation engine, creates graphs of the generated tone, to visually adjust the intonation, and records samples for reference.

Shark

Shark is a profiler, used by

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

s to optimize software programs on macOS. It samples software at set time intervals (or driven by hardware performance monitors events) taking snapshots of the stack, showing the functions which require more of the application's resources. Includes tools to analyze the data produced by a sampling run. Since Mac OS X 10.7, it is not on the Apple site any more and was replaced by

Spin Control

Spin Control is a performance tool used for monitoring hang activity in software programs. The program gets its name from the

spinning pinwheel The spinning pinwheel is a type of progress indicator and a variation of the mouse pointer (graphical user interfaces), pointer used in Apple Inc., Apple's macOS to indicate that an application software, application is busy. Officially, the ''m ...

on macOS. Discontinued as of Xcode 4.2.

Thread Viewer

Thread Viewer is a performance

tool A tool is an Physical object, object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many Tool use by animals, animals use simple tools, only human bei ...

which graphically displays activity across a range of threads. It provides color-coded time-line views of thread activity and can display backtraces of activity at specific points in time. It was merged in

app, and can be accessed via "System Trace" instrument.

Xcode

Xcode is an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) for

containing a suite of

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

tools developed by

for developing software for macOS,

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

watchOS watchOS is the operating system of the Apple Watch, developed by Apple Inc., Apple. It is based on iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone, and has many similar features. It was released on April 24, 2015, along with the Apple Watch, the o ...

tvOS tvOS (formerly Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. The software for the second-generation and later ...

, and

visionOS visionOS is a mixed reality operating system derived primarily from iPadOS and its core frameworks (including UIKit, SwiftUI, ARKit and RealityKit), and MR-specific frameworks for foveated rendering and real-time interaction. It was develope ...

. Xcode supports developing

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

for the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s C, C++,

Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...

Objective-C++ Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C (programming language), C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in ...

AppleScript AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. that facilitates automated control of Mac applications. First introduced in System 7, it is currently included in macOS in a package of automation tools. The term ''AppleScript'' may ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

ResEdit ResEdit is a discontinued developer tool application for the Apple Macintosh, used to create and edit resources directly in the Mac's resource fork architecture. It was an alternative to tools such as REdit, and the resource compiler ''Rez.'' Fo ...

(Rez), and

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

, with a variety of programming models, including but not limited to

, and Java.

References

External links

* – official site at

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

{{MacOS developer tools MacOS programming tools TvOS software