Metal is a modern, tightly integrated graphics and compute API coupled with a powerful shading language designed so you can take full advantage of Apple silicon. The low-overhead model gives you direct control over each task the GPU performs, enabling you to maximize the efficiency of your graphics and compute software, and create incredible visual experiences. Metal also enables tight integration of machine learning with scalable performance across Apple platforms, and includes an unparalleled suite of GPU profiling and debugging tools to help you improve performance and graphics quality. And Metal 4 enables entirely new ways to integrate machine learning while also enabling you to encode commands and compile shaders more efficiently than ever.
Metal
Whether you want to build a graphics-intensive app, a cutting-edge game with beautiful visuals, or target demanding compute workloads like machine learning, Metal puts the advanced capabilities of Apple-designed GPUs at your fingertips. Tap into the incredible performance and efficiency of Apple silicon across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.
Get to know Metal
Games and graphics
Maximize performance with MetalFX. MetalFX Upscaling, Frame Interpolation, and Denoising to save time rendering your frames so you can dramatically improve game performance.
The Game Porting Toolkit provides everything you need to get started bringing your game to Apple platforms. Discover tools that can help you evaluate your game, convert your shaders and assets, and more. You can also access the human interface guidelines and code samples to build native games that feel at home on Apple devices.
In addition to Metal, Apple provides the tools you need to create the next generation of stunning games. And with the latest advancements in Apple silicon, you can distribute across a unified gaming platform to reach millions of players around the world.
Machine learning
Combine traditional graphics with machine learning inference to take your rendering performance to the next level. Encode inference networks at the command level or integrate them directly into your shaders to compute lighting, materials, and geometry to enable highly realistic visuals for your games.
Take advantage of highly optimized compute and graphics shaders through the Metal Performance Shaders framework or leverage the Metal Performance Shaders Graph framework to integrate Core ML models directly.
Accelerate the training of machine learning models in third-party frameworks right on your Mac with PyTorch backends.
Metal developer tools
Inspect, debug, and optimize your entire rendering pipeline with Metal debugger — from mesh shading to ray tracing and machine learning. Monitor performance in real time with the Metal performance HUD. Validate your Metal app usage with the Metal API and shader validation layers. Inspect the parallel work on the CPU and GPU, and the memory usage of your Metal app with Metal system trace in Instruments. Take advantage of command line interfaces to easily integrate your capture, debug, and profile workflows with automation and AI agents.
