Metal (API)
| Metal | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Apple used the mobile multiplayer online battle arena game Vainglory to demonstrate Metal's graphics capabilities at the iPhone 6's September 2014 announcement event. | |
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
| Release | June 2014 |
| Stable release | 4
/ June 2025 |
| Written in | Metal Shading Language (C++14-based in Metal 1–3, C++17-based in Metal 4),
Metal GPU Drivers: C/C++, Metal Runtime: Objective-C, C/C++, Metal API: Objective-C, Swift, C++ (binding via metal-cpp) |
| Operating system | iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and visionOS |
| Type | 3D graphics and compute API |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | developer |
Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API created by Apple, debuting in iOS 8. Metal combines functions similar to OpenGL and OpenCL in one API. It is intended to improve performance by offering low-level access to the GPU hardware for apps on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and visionOS (though not watchOS). It is similar to low-level APIs on other platforms such as Vulkan and DirectX 12.
Metal is an object-oriented API that can be invoked using the Swift, Objective-C or C++17 programming languages. Full-blown GPU execution is controlled via the Metal Shading Language (MSL).