Installing for iOS/tvOS development

All versions starting from iOS 12 are supported

Prerequisites

For iOS development you need to download Xcode and the iOS SDK. Xcode can be found at the App Store or here and the iOS SDK, if it is not already included in your version of Xcode, can be downloaded from Xcode's preferences menu under the downloads tab. The minimum required iOS version is 12.0.

In case you are not familiar with iOS, Objective-C or Xcode, we recommend taking a look at the available documentation at Apple's website. This can be a good starting point.

Download and unpack GStreamer binaries

Starting with version 1.28, GStreamer for iOS/tvOS is distributed as an .xcframework archive. You can find the download links at:

https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/#ios

Download the xcframework archive, then unpack it to a location of your choice. You can then simply import it to your project in Xcode. As of GStreamer 1.28.1, it supports iOS and tvOS ARM64 targets, as well as iOS/tvOS Simulator on ARM64 and X86_64 devices.

Configure your development environment

GStreamer is written in C, and the iOS API uses mostly Objective-C (and C for some parts), but this should cause no problems as those languages interoperate freely. You can mix both in the same source code, for example.

Building the tutorials

The tutorials code are in the gst-docs in the examples/tutorials/xcode iOS folder.

To run our tutorials, you need to first import the GStreamer.xcframework downloaded in the previous step.

After downloading, please extract it to the examples/tutorials/xcode iOS folder, so that GStreamer.xcframework sits next to GStreamer iOS Tutorials.xcodeproj. The Xcode project is set up to detect it there automatically. Alternatively, you can manually add the .xcframework from another directory by right-clicking Frameworks in the source list on the left and using "Add Files to...`.

You can then pick any of the tutorial targets and try running it in a simulator or on your actual device.

Creating new projects

For new projects, please use our tutorial sources as a reference for the basic setup needed to run GStreamer in your project. To understand how all the pieces interact, take a look at the iOS tutorials page.