← All resources

The State of Vulkan on Apple – Jan. 2026

Auto-discovered

Blog Intermediate

Richard S. Wright Jr.

Visit resource ↗

Description

The State of Vulkan on Apple - Jan. 2026 is a LunarG guide by Richard S. Wright Jr., revised January 2026, on shipping Vulkan apps on macOS and iOS without a native Apple Vulkan driver.

It contrasts MoltenVK (broad Apple Silicon and Intel support, nearly Vulkan 1.4) with KosmicKrisp (Mesa-based, Metal 4, conformant Vulkan 1.3 on Apple Silicon). Sections cover bundling the Vulkan SDK loader and ICDs, iOS frameworks versus dylibs, validation layers, Vulkan Configurator, and packaging explicit layers in the app bundle.

It is for intermediate Vulkan developers porting engines to Apple platforms who already know instance, device, and layer setup on Windows or Linux.

The article is free HTML on LunarG's blog with bundle layout examples and SDK download pointers.

It is useful as a current packaging checklist when choosing or combining MoltenVK and KosmicKrisp.