What is the difference between AppKit and UIKit?

7
votes

UIKit and AppKit still share a lot of concepts. Like in "AppKit contains all the objects you need to implement the user interface for a macOS app—windows, panels, buttons, menus, scrollers, and text fields" (by Apple documentation). And same UIKit is support the user interface. So what's the main difference between these two framework.

4
iosmacosuikitappkit
AppKit for macOS, UIKit for iOS. That's the main difference. – Sweeper
@PritiKanauziya probably because you don't seem to have done any research other than pressing the very first link on Google and reading only the first couple sentences... – LinusGeffarth

4 Answers

10
votes

AppKit AppKit is included in the OS X SDK only. It provides all the classes and controls you need for creating Mac applications. Most of these classes share a common naming prefix starts with NS and classes you will be working with include - NSView, NSButton.

UIKit

UiKit is the framework that iOS uses to provide its UI and its classes start with a UI prefix. For example, both frameworks have a class to represent color include UIColor, while other concepts are pretty unique to UIKit, such as its use of predefined controllers such as UINavigationController and UITabBarController

7
votes

AppKit is much older and was developed for desktop machines, like Macintosh (Mac OS X) and (before that) NeXT.

UIKit is later, a deliberate reduction and rationalization of AppKit, developed for iPhones (iOS).

3
votes

Appkit is for Mac OS SDK[Cocoa] and UIKIT is for iPhone/iPad [Cocoa Touch]

1
votes

They are the same UI framework except that UIKit's views and controllers were specifically made for touch, while the AppKit equivalents were specifically made for the mouse or non touch .