XD is packed with tools to help you effortlessly design websites, apps, voice, and so much more. Quick sketch wireframes and mockups. Create high-fidelity designs for any screen. Work together in real-time. Fill it with interactions. Test across devices. Flip static designs into interactive prototypes. SmartDraw (Best Overall) If you’re looking for an all purpose diagramming tool that makes things. Apple Mac OS X El Capitan Free VIEW →. OS X El Capitan features new options for managing windows, smarter Spotlight search, app enhancements, and faster performance. Create beautiful designs & professional graphics in seconds. Share your design via any social media, email or text. Download the Canva for Mac desktop app now!
This document is the starting point for learning how to create Mac apps. It contains fundamental information about the OS X environment and how your apps interact with that environment. It also contains important information about the architecture of Mac apps and tips for designing key parts of your app.
At a Glance
Cocoa is the application environment that unlocks the full power of OS X. Cocoa provides APIs, libraries, and runtimes that help you create fast, exciting apps that automatically inherit the beautiful look and feel of OS X, as well as standard behaviors users expect.
Cocoa Helps You Create Great Apps for OS X
You write apps for OS X using Cocoa, which provides a significant amount of infrastructure for your program. Fundamental design patterns are used throughout Cocoa to enable your app to interface seamlessly with subsystem frameworks, and core application objects provide key behaviors to support simplicity and extensibility in app architecture. Key parts of the Cocoa environment are designed particularly to support ease of use, one of the most important aspects of successful Mac apps. Many apps should adopt iCloud to provide a more coherent user experience by eliminating the need to synchronize data explicitly between devices.
Relevant Chapters:The Mac Application Environment, The Core App Design, and Integrating iCloud Support Into Your App
Common Behaviors Make Apps Complete
During the design phase of creating your app, you need to think about how to implement certain features that users expect in well-formed Mac apps. Integrating these features into your app architecture can have an impact on the user experience: accessibility, preferences, Spotlight, services, resolution independence, fast user switching, and the Dock. Enabling your app to assume full-screen mode, taking over the entire screen, provides users with a more immersive, cinematic experience and enables them to concentrate fully on their content without distractions.
Relevant Chapters:Supporting Common App Behaviors and Implementing the Full-Screen Experience
Get It Right: Meet System and App Store Requirements
Configuring your app properly is an important part of the development process. Mac apps use a structured directory called a bundle to manage their code and resource files. And although most of the files are custom and exist to support your app, some are required by the system or the App Store and must be configured properly. The application bundle also contains the resources you need to provide to internationalize your app to support multiple languages.
Finish Your App with Performance Tuning
As you develop your app and your project code stabilizes, you can begin performance tuning. Of course, you want your app to launch and respond to the user’s commands as quickly as possible. A responsive app fits easily into the user’s workflow and gives an impression of being well crafted. You can improve the performance of your app by speeding up launch time and decreasing your app’s code footprint.
Relevant Chapter:Tuning for Performance and Responsiveness
How to Use This Document
This guide introduces you to the most important technologies that go into writing an app. In this guide you will see the whole landscape of what's needed to write one. That is, this guide shows you all the 'pieces' you need and how they fit together. There are important aspects of app design that this guide does not cover, such as user interface design. However, this guide includes many links to other documents that provide details about the technologies it introduces, as well as links to tutorials that provide a hands-on approach.
In addition, this guide emphasizes certain technologies introduced in OS X v10.7, which provide essential capabilities that set your app apart from older ones and give it remarkable ease of use, bringing some of the best features from iOS to OS X.
See Also
The following documents provide additional information about designing Mac apps, as well as more details about topics covered in this document:
To work through a tutorial showing you how to create a Cocoa app, see Start Developing Mac Apps Today.
For information about user interface design enabling you to create effective apps using OS X, see OS X Human Interface Guidelines.
To understand how to create an explicit app ID, create provisioning profiles, and enable the correct entitlements for your application, so you can sell your application through the Mac App Store or use iCloud storage, see App Distribution Guide.
For a general survey of OS X technologies, see Mac Technology Overview.
To understand how to implement a document-based app, see Document-Based App Programming Guide for Mac.
Copyright © 2015 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Updated: 2015-03-09
With over 2,400 configurable symbols, SF Symbols is designed to integrate seamlessly with San Francisco, the system font for Apple platforms. Each symbol comes in a wide range of weights and scales that automatically align with text labels, and supports Dynamic Type and the Bold Text accessibility feature. You can also export symbols and edit them in vector graphics editing tools to create custom symbols with shared design characteristics and accessibility features.
Download SF Symbols 2September 22, 2020
macOS 10.15.3 or later (147.6 MB)
Apple Design Resources for iOS include Sketch, Photoshop, and Adobe XD templates, along with comprehensive UI resources that depict the full range of controls, views, and glyphs available to developers using the iOS SDK. These resources help you design apps that match the iOS design language. Icon and glyph production files are preconfigured to automate asset production using Sketch slices or Adobe Generator for Photoshop CC. Color swatches, dynamic type tables, and fonts are also included.
iOS 14 (Beta) Sketch LibraryJuly 29, 2020
iOS 14 (96.1 MB)
July 29, 2020
iOS 14 (90 MB)
July 29, 2020
iOS 14 (917 MB)
October 23, 2020
iOS 14 (149.1 MB)
February 14, 2020 (v33)
iOS 13 (Requires Sketch 58 or greater)
February 14, 2020
iOS 13 (58.6 MB)
February 14, 2020
iOS 13 (505.8 MB)
February 14, 2020
iOS 13 (81.5 MB)
iOS 13 Download for KeynoteMac App For Graphic Design
July 29, 2020
iOS 13 (10.9 MB)
To download iOS device frames for use when marketing your app, see App Store Marketing Guidelines.
Apple Design Resources for macOS include Sketch and Photoshop templates for Touch Bar glyphs.
macOS 11 (Beta) Download for Sketch*July 29, 2020
macOS 10.15 (9.3 MB)
*Only icon production templates updated for macOS 11
August 3, 2020
macOS 10.15 (4.5 MB)
*Only icon production templates updated for macOS 11
October 23, 2020
macOS 10.15 (8.4 MB)
*Only icon production templates updated for macOS 11
June 29, 2019
macOS 10.15 (3.4 MB, Requires Sketch 51 or greater)
June 3, 2019
macOS 10.15 (2.3 MB)
Graphic Design Apps For Mac
June 3, 2019
macOS 10.15 (3.9 MB)
July 29, 2020
macOS 10.15 (4.3 MB)
Apple Design Resources for watchOS include Sketch and Photoshop dynamic type guides, layout specifications, app templates, Apple Watch bezels, and other UI materials. An installer for SF Compact, the system typeface for watchOS, is also included.
Add watchOS Sketch LibraryJuly 29, 2020
watchOS 5 10.14 (3.3 MB, Requires Sketch 51 or greater)
July 29, 2020
watchOS 5 (4.3 MB)
July 29, 2020
watchOS 5 (38.9 MB)
October 23, 2020
watchOS 5 (9 MB)
To download watchOS device frames for use when marketing your app, see App Store Marketing Guidelines.
Apple Design Resources for tvOS include icon and image templates, as well as tools for previewing layered image files and the parallax effect.
Download for PhotoshopJuly 29, 2020 (1.4 MB)
To download tvOS product imagery for use when marketing your app, see App Store Marketing Guidelines.
Use Parallax Previewer to preview layered Photoshop files, assemble individual image layers from PNG files and preview the parallax effect, or preview layered images exported by the Parallax Exporter plug-in.
Download for macOSParallax Previewer requires macOS 10.10.5 or later.
Use the Parallax Exporter plug-in to preview a layered image while working in Adobe Photoshop.
Download for macOSRequires Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5 or later and macOS 10.9.0 or later.
Download for WindowsRequires Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5 or later and Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 or later.
Use the Add Apple Watch Face button to enable installing Apple Watch Faces from your iOS app, watchOS app or website.
Use the AirPlay glyph when referring to AirPlay in setup or instructional text within your app.
Use the AR glyph and AR badges to indicate and launch AR experiences in your app’s UI.
The Apple Design Resources for CarPlay apps include Sketch and Photoshop type tables, as well as fonts.
Download for PhotoshopJuly 29, 2020 (1.4 MB)
Use the provided Game Center icons when linking to the Game Center dashboard within your game. Use the provided glyphs when linking directly to leaderboard, achievement, and profile sections of the dashboard.
Use the Apple Health icon in your app that supports HealthKit.
Use the HomeKit glyph when referring to HomeKit in setup or instructional text within your app.
Mac App For Home Design
Use the provided Apple logos to design Sign in with Apple buttons that use left-aligned logos or that display a logo only.
Marketing Imagery
A variety of imagery is available for use when marketing your app. Follow all usage guidelines.
Architecture Apps For Mac
iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS
Apple Product ImagesIncludes device frames.
Apple News
Graphic Design Apps Free
Apple Pay
Music, iTunes, and Podcasts
Mac App For Room Design
Wallet
Other
Licensing and Trademark ImageryIncludes device and technology icons.