iOS

IOS
Information
Type	Mobile operating system
Developer	Apple Inc.
Written In	C, C++, Objective-C, Swift, assembly language
Operating System	Darwin (XNU kernel)
License	Proprietary, with open-source components
Supported Devices	iPhone, iPod Touch (through iOS 15)
Release Date	June 29, 2007
Website	https://www.apple.com/ios/

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iOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone line, and historically for the iPod Touch. It was unveiled on January 9, 2007 and released on June 29, 2007 alongside the first-generation iPhone. The system was originally called iPhone OS and was renamed iOS in June 2010, around the time the iPad shipped on the same software base.

iOS is built on Darwin, the same Unix-derived foundation used by Apple's desktop system macOS, and uses the XNU kernel. It is written in C, C++, Objective-C, Swift, and assembly language. Apple opened the App Store on July 10, 2008 with about 500 third-party applications; by December 2023 the store listed more than 3.8 million iOS apps. As of mid-2026 iOS is the world's second most widely installed mobile operating system after Android, with roughly a quarter of the global smartphone market.

The operating system is the software base from which Apple derived iPadOS (split off as a separate system for the iPad in 2019), tvOS, and watchOS, and it shares a common foundation with visionOS, the operating system of the Apple Vision Pro. Its relevance to virtual and augmented reality comes mainly from ARKit, the mobile AR framework Apple added in 2017, and from the depth-sensing hardware (the TrueDepth camera and the LiDAR scanner) that later iPhones and iPads expose to that framework.

History and naming

Apple announced the iPhone and its operating system on January 9, 2007, and the first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007 running the software that would later be numbered iOS 1. The original release had no public software development kit and no App Store; both arrived in 2008, with the App Store opening on July 10, 2008. Apple previewed version 4 in April 2010 still under the iPhone OS name, then renamed the system iOS at its June 2010 developer conference to reflect its use on the iPad as well as the iPhone.

Apple releases a major version of iOS roughly once a year, usually previewed at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June and released to the public in September. iOS 18, announced on June 10, 2024 and released on September 16, 2024, was the version that introduced Apple's Apple Intelligence features. In 2025 Apple changed its version numbering to a year-based scheme, so the release that followed iOS 18 was named iOS 26 rather than iOS 19, aligning the number with the calendar year of the bulk of its release cycle. As of June 2026, iOS 26 is the current stable line.

The table below lists selected releases and the AR-related capabilities they introduced.

Version	Year	Notable AR/VR-relevant addition
iPhone OS 1	2007	First release; multi-touch interface, Safari browser, sensors (accelerometer)
iOS 4	2010	System renamed from iPhone OS to iOS
iOS 11	2017	ARKit introduced, Apple's first AR framework
iOS 12	2018	ARKit 2 and AR Quick Look; USDZ file format (with Pixar)
iOS 13	2019	ARKit 3 (People Occlusion, Motion Capture); RealityKit introduced
iOS 13.4	2020	ARKit 3.5 with LiDAR Scanner support (for 2020 iPad Pro)
iOS 14	2020	ARKit 4 (Depth API, Location Anchors, expanded face tracking)
iOS 16	2022	RoomPlan API for LiDAR room scanning
iOS 18	2024	Apple Intelligence features; shares foundation with visionOS

System foundation

iOS shares its lower layers with macOS. Both rest on Darwin, an open-source Unix-like core that includes the XNU kernel, while the higher application layers and user interface differ. Developers write iOS apps mainly in Swift or the older Objective-C, using Apple's UIKit and SwiftUI interface frameworks and the Metal graphics API for low-level GPU work. The hardware sensors that matter for spatial applications, the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, have been part of the platform since its early versions and are exposed to apps through the Core Motion framework; ARKit fuses this inertial data with camera images to track the device in space.

In 2019 Apple split the iPad's software into iPadOS, a separate but closely related operating system, so that the two device families could diverge in their interface and multitasking behavior while keeping a shared base of frameworks. Most frameworks present in iOS, including ARKit and RealityKit, are available across iOS and iPadOS, which is why AR apps generally run on both iPhone and iPad.

ARKit and the iOS AR stack

The central reason iOS appears in VR/AR coverage is ARKit, announced on June 5, 2017 and shipped with iOS 11. Apple described it as a framework that lets developers create augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad, taking apps "beyond the screen" to interact with the physical world. ARKit handles the underlying work of world tracking: it combines the camera feed with motion-sensor data (visual-inertial odometry), detects flat surfaces such as floors and tables, estimates scene lighting, and lets apps anchor virtual content to real-world positions. At launch ARKit ran on any iOS 11 device with an Apple A9 chip or newer, which covered the iPhone 6s and later. Because every iPhone sold over the following years met that requirement, ARKit gave Apple one of the largest installed bases of AR-capable devices, distinct from headset-based VR.

Apple expanded ARKit each year:

• ARKit 2 (iOS 12, 2018) added shared multi-user sessions, persistent and detectable real-world objects, and improved face tracking. Alongside it Apple introduced AR Quick Look, a built-in viewer that displays 3D models in the system, and the USDZ file format, created with Pixar for sharing AR scenes across Messages, Mail, Safari, and other apps. Apple also said it would work with Adobe to support USDZ in Creative Cloud tools.
• ARKit 3 (iOS 13, 2019) added People Occlusion, which lets virtual objects pass correctly behind people in the scene, and Motion Capture, which tracks a person's body movement from a single camera and maps it onto a skeleton. It also enabled simultaneous front and back camera use and multi-face tracking.
• ARKit 3.5 (iOS 13.4, March 2020) added support for the LiDAR Scanner introduced on the 2020 iPad Pro, including a Scene Geometry mesh of the environment.
• ARKit 4 (iOS 14, 2020) added a Depth API that exposed per-pixel depth from the LiDAR scanner, Location Anchors that place AR content at fixed real-world map coordinates using Apple Maps data, and extended face tracking to non-TrueDepth devices with an A12 Bionic chip or newer.

In 2019 Apple also introduced RealityKit, a Swift 3D rendering and simulation framework built specifically for AR, announced alongside iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 at WWDC 2019. RealityKit uses ARKit for tracking and is integrated with Metal for rendering; it includes physics, animation, and built-in networking so that an AR scene can be synchronized across multiple devices. Apple's earlier AR apps were typically built on SceneKit, a graphics framework that predated ARKit; RealityKit was positioned as the newer, AR-first path for building 3D content on iOS.

Depth-sensing hardware

iOS gains much of its AR precision from depth sensors built into the hardware and surfaced through ARKit. Two distinct systems matter.

The TrueDepth camera, first shipped on the iPhone X in November 2017, is a front-facing system that projects more than 30,000 infrared dots in a known pattern and reads them back with a dedicated infrared camera to build a depth map of the user's face in real time. Apple uses it for Face ID authentication and for face-tracking features such as Animoji and Memoji, and it exposes the same face mesh to developers for face-tracking AR, for example virtual masks and makeup that follow the user's expressions.

The LiDAR Scanner is a rear, outward-facing time-of-flight sensor that measures how long emitted light takes to return from surfaces, producing depth across the scene in a single capture rather than inferring it from camera motion over time. Apple first shipped LiDAR on the 2020 iPad Pro, announced March 18, 2020, then brought it to the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max in October 2020. Because it captures depth instantly, LiDAR enables what Apple calls "instant AR," placing virtual objects without the few seconds of device movement that camera-only SLAM tracking needs, and it improves occlusion by giving ARKit an accurate mesh of the room.

Building on LiDAR, Apple added the RoomPlan API in iOS 16 (2022). RoomPlan is a Swift API powered by ARKit that uses the camera and LiDAR Scanner to scan a room and produce a parametric 3D floor plan, recognizing walls, doors, windows, and furniture and exporting the result as a USD or USDZ file for use in design and modeling tools.

Relationship to virtual reality and visionOS

iOS itself is a handheld AR and 3D-graphics platform rather than a head-mounted virtual reality system, but it has two connections to VR.

First, before Apple shipped its own headset, third-party smartphone VR relied on iPhones running iOS. Google Cardboard, a low-cost viewer that holds a phone in front of stereo lenses, supported iOS through Google's VR SDK, and Cardboard apps ran on iPhones. Google wound down that effort: it announced in November 2019 that it would open-source the Cardboard SDK and stop active development, and in March 2021 the Google Store stopped selling Cardboard viewers, leaving the open-source SDK as the only path forward.

Second, and more important now, iOS shares a foundation with visionOS, the operating system that runs the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. Apple describes visionOS as built on the same bedrock as iOS and iPadOS, reusing frameworks including UIKit, SwiftUI, ARKit, and RealityKit and adding spatial-computing systems such as foveated rendering on top. Because of that shared base, the great majority of existing iPhone and iPad apps run on visionOS unmodified, displayed as flat windows inside the user's space, and Apple has said more than a million iOS and iPadOS apps are available on the platform. For developers, this means skills and code written for iOS AR carry over to Apple's headset, and many spatial apps reuse the RealityKit and ARKit knowledge that originated on the phone.

The practical effect is that iOS is the entry point to Apple's spatial-computing ecosystem. Mainstream AR experiences on iPhone, including the AR mode in games such as Pokemon Go and product-preview features in shopping apps that drop a USDZ model into the user's room through AR Quick Look, run on the same ARKit and RealityKit stack that underpins the Vision Pro.

Current status

iOS remains in active annual development. As of June 2026 the current stable line is iOS 26, following the 2025 switch to year-based version numbers, and iOS 18 (2024) was the release that brought Apple Intelligence to the iPhone. The AR frameworks on iOS, ARKit and RealityKit, continue to be developed in parallel with visionOS, and the LiDAR-equipped Pro iPhones and iPad Pro models remain the devices with the most complete on-device depth sensing.