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UIKit is an application development environment andgraphical user interfacetoolkit fromApple Inc. used to build apps for theiOS,iPadOS, andtvOS operating systems.^[1]

UIKit provides anabstraction layer of iOS, theoperating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. UIKit is insipired by theAppKit found in themacOSCocoa API toolset and, like it, is primarily written in theObjective-C language. UIKit allows the use of hardware and features that are not found in macOS computers and are thus unique to the iOS range of devices. Just like AppKit, UIKit follows aModel–View–Controller (MVC) software architecture.

UIKit contains a different set ofgraphical control elements from AppKit. Tools for developing applications based on UIKit are included in theiOS SDK.

iOS, watchOS, and tvOS technologies can be seen as a set of layers, with UIKit at the highest level and the core operating system /kernel at the bottom.

A hierarchical view of the iOS, watchOS, and tvOS technologies can be shown as follows:

1. UIKit
2. Media / Application Services
3. Core Services
4. Core OS / iOS kernel

Some of the main features and technologies of UIKit are:

UIKit provides the keyframeworks for developing applications on devices running iOS, and is based atopFoundation Kit. Other frameworks built by Apple that complement AppKit are:

Microsoft'sWinObjC, theGNUstep-based iOS bridge for theUniversal Windows Platform, contains working implementations of frameworks such as Foundation, UIKit, and MapKit released under theMIT License.^[2] One of the UIKit implementations is based onXAML.^[3]

Various efforts have tried to bring UIKit to macOS:

• Chameleon is a port of UIKit tomacOS from 2014.^[4]
• ZeeZide's UXKit is a more recent port of UIKit to macOS. It exists a layer above AppKit and UIKit.^[5]
• Apple used a "UXKit" private framework for a 2015 version of Photos.app.^[6]
• Apple made the bridge more official with the "iosMac" or "Marzipan" project in 2018, which put an "iOSSupport" directory full of iOS frameworks inmacOS Mojave. They were originally restricted from developer use^[7] and was finally made official with the release ofMac Catalyst in 2019.^[8]

• Gesture recognition
• IOS
• IPhone
• Proprietary software

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