IOS
iOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple for its iPhone line of smartphones. It was unveiled in January 2007 alongside the first-generation iPhone, and was released in June 2007. Major versions of iOS are released annually; the current stable version, iOS 26, was released to the public on September 15, 2025.
Besides powering iPhone, iOS is the basis for three other operating systems made by Apple: iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS. iOS formerly also powered iPads until iPadOS was introduced in 2019 and the iPod Touch line of devices until its discontinuation. iOS is the world's second most widely installed mobile operating system, after Android. As of December 2023, Apple's App Store contains more than 3.8 million iOS mobile apps.
iOS is based on macOS. Like macOS, it includes components of the Mach microkernel and FreeBSD. It is a Unix-like operating system. Although some parts of iOS are open source under the Apple Public Source License and other licenses, iOS is proprietary software.
History
In 2005, when Steve Jobs began planning the iPhone, he stated that he had a choice to either "shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod". Jobs favored the former approach but pitted the Macintosh and iPod teams, led by Scott Forstall and Tony Fadell, respectively, against each other in an internal competition, with Forstall winning by creating iPhone OS. The decision enabled the success of the iPhone as a platform for third-party developers: using a well-known desktop operating system as its basis allowed the many third-party Mac developers to write software for the iPhone with minimal retraining. Forstall was also responsible for creating a software development kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes.The operating system was unveiled with the iPhone at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 9, 2007, and released in June of that year. At the time of its unveiling in January, Steve Jobs claimed: "iPhone runs OS X" and runs "desktop class applications", but at the time of the iPhone's release, the operating system was renamed "iPhone OS". Initially, third-party native applications were not supported. Jobs' reasoning was that developers could build web applications through the Safari web browser that "would behave like native apps on the iPhone". In October 2007, Apple announced that a native software development kit was under development and that they planned to put it "in developers' hands in February". On March 6, 2008, Apple held a press event, announcing the iPhone SDK.
The iOS App Store was opened on July 10, 2008, with an initial 500 applications available. This quickly grew to 3,000 in September 2008, 15,000 in January 2009, 50,000 in June 2009, 100,000 in November 2009, 250,000 in August 2010, 650,000 in July 2012, 1 million in October 2013, 2 million in June 2016, and 2.2 million in January 2017., 1 million apps are natively compatible with the iPad tablet computer. These apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times. App intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimated that the App Store would reach 5 million apps by 2020.
In September 2007, Apple announced the iPod Touch, a redesigned iPod based on the iPhone form factor. On January 27, 2010, Apple introduced their much-anticipated media tablet, the iPad, featuring a larger screen than the iPhone and iPod Touch, and designed for web browsing, media consumption, and reading, and offering multi-touch interaction with multimedia formats including newspapers, e-books, photos, videos, music, word processing documents, video games, and most existing iPhone apps using a screen. It also includes a mobile version of Safari for web browsing, as well as access to the App Store, iTunes Library, iBookstore, Contacts, and Notes. Content is downloadable via Wi-Fi and optional 3G service or synced through the user's computer. AT&T was initially the sole U.S. provider of 3G wireless access for the iPad.
In June 2010, Apple rebranded iPhone OS as "iOS". The trademark "IOS" had been used by Cisco for over a decade for its operating system, IOS, used on its routers. To avoid any potential lawsuit, Apple licensed the "IOS" trademark from Cisco.
The Apple Watch smartwatch was announced by Tim Cook on September 9, 2014, being introduced as a product with health and fitness-tracking. It was released on April 24, 2015. It uses watchOS as its operating system; watchOS is based on iOS, with new features created specially for the Apple Watch such as an activity tracking app.
In October 2016, Apple opened its first iOS Developer Academy in Naples inside University of Naples Federico II's new campus. The course is completely free, aimed at acquiring specific technical skills on the creation and management of applications for the Apple ecosystem platforms. At the academy there are also issues of business administration and there is a path dedicated to the design of graphical interfaces. Students have the opportunity to participate in the "Enterprise Track", an in-depth training experience on the entire life cycle of an app, from design to implementation, to security, troubleshooting, data storage and cloud usage. As of 2020, the academy graduated almost a thousand students from all over the world, who have worked on 400 app ideas and have already published about 50 apps on the iOS App Store. In the 2018–2019 academic year, students from more than 30 countries arrived. 35 of these have been selected to attend the Worldwide Developer Conference, the annual Apple Developer Conference held annually in California in early June.
File:Steve Jobs with the Apple iPad no logo.jpg|thumb|upright|Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the iPad.
On June 3, 2019, iPadOS, the branded version of iOS for iPad, was announced during the WWDC 2019 keynote; it was launched on September 25, 2019.
On June 9, 2025, at WWDC 2025, Apple introduced iOS 26. The version number indicates the year following the year in which the version was introduced; this numbering scheme is now being used for all Apple operating systems, keeping their version numbers synchronized.
Features
Interface
The iOS user interface is based upon direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch. Interface control elements include sliders, switches, and buttons. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device or rotating it in three dimensions. Various accessibility described in functions enable users with vision and hearing disabilities to properly use iOS.iOS devices boot to the lock screen. The lock screen shows the time and a user's lock screen widgets, which display timely information from apps. The lock screen also has two buttons, called Controls, which are only available on iPhone. These default to flashlight and camera, but they can be customized to any control available in Control Center and can also be removed. Upon unlock, a user is directed to the home screen, which is the primary navigation and information "hub" on iOS devices, analogous to the desktop found on personal computers. iOS home screens are typically made up of app icons and widgets; app icons launch the associated app, whereas widgets display live, auto-updating content, such as a weather forecast, the user's email inbox, or a news ticker directly on the home screen.
Along the top of the screen is a status bar, showing information about the device and its connectivity. The Control Center can be "pulled" down from the top right of the notch or Dynamic Island on iPhones with Face ID, or can be "pulled" up from the bottom to top of the screen on iPhones with Touch ID, giving access to various toggles to manage the device more quickly without having to open the Settings. It is possible to manage brightness, volume, wireless connections, music player, etc.
Scrolling from the top left to the bottom will open the Notification Center, which in the latest versions of iOS is very similar to the lock screen. It displays notifications in chronological order and groups them by application. From the notifications of some apps it is possible to interact directly, for example by replying to a message directly from it. Notifications are sent in two modes, critical alerts that are displayed on the lock screen and signaled by a distinctive sound and vibration, accompanied by a warning banner and the app badge icon, and standard alerts which use a default sound and vibration. Both can be found in the Notification Center, and show for a set amount of time on the lock screen.
On iPhones with Touch ID, screenshots can be created with the simultaneous press of the home and power buttons. In comparison to Android, which requires the buttons to be held down, a short press does suffice on iOS. On iPhone with Face ID, screenshots are captured using the volume-up and power buttons instead.
The camera application used a skeuomorphic closing camera shutter animation prior to iOS 7. Since then, it uses a simple short blackout effect. Notable additions over time include HDR photography and the option to save both normal and high dynamic range photographs simultaneously where the former prevents ghosting effects from moving objects, automatic HDR adjustment, "live photo" with short video bundled to each photo if enabled, and a digital zoom shortcut. Some camera settings such as video resolution and frame rate are not adjustable through the camera interface itself, but are outsourced to the system settings.
A new feature in iOS 13 called "context menus" shows related actions when you touch and hold an item. When the context menu is displayed, the background is blurred.
To choose from a few options, a selection control is used. Selectors can appear anchored at the bottom or in line with the content. Date selectors take on the appearance of any other selection control, but with a column for day, month, and optionally year.
Alerts appear in the center of the screen, but there are also alerts that scroll up from the bottom of the screen. Destructive actions are colored red.
The official font of iOS is San Francisco. It is designed for small text readability, and is used throughout the operating system, including third-party apps.
The icons are 180x180px in size for iPhones with a larger screen, usually models over 6 inches, including iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 8 Plus, while they are 120x120px on iPhones with smaller displays.