In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It was initially released in late 2003; the latest stable release is version 15, released on September 18, 2023, and is available free of charge via the Mac App Store and the Apple Developer website. Registered developers can also download preview releases and prior versions of the suite through the Apple Developer website. Xcode includes command-line tools that enable UNIX-style development via the Terminal app in macOS. They can also be downloaded and installed without the GUI.
Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Systems, Adobe donated Flex to the Apache Software Foundation in 2011 and it was promoted to a top-level project in December 2012.
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for one or more mobile devices, which can include personal digital assistants (PDA), enterprise digital assistants (EDA), or mobile phones. Such software applications are specifically designed to run on mobile devices, taking numerous hardware constraints into consideration. Common constraints include CPU architecture and speeds, available memory (RAM), limited data storage capacities, and considerable variation in displays and input methods. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing or delivered as web applications, using server-side or client-side processing to provide an "application-like" experience within a web browser.
Dashcode was a software application created by Apple Inc. that was included with Mac OS X Leopard and facilitates the development of widgets for Dashboard. It was first included on new MacBooks shipping around the time of May 24, 2006, as part of the Xcode developer tools.
Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applications, programmed using Adobe Animate, ActionScript, and optionally Apache Flex. It was originally released in 2008. The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, macOS, and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS.
The iOS SDK, formerly the iPhone SDK, is a software development kit (SDK) developed by Apple Inc. The kit allows for the development of mobile apps on Apple's iOS and iPadOS operating systems.
NS Basic is a family of development tools developed and commercially marketed by NSB Corporation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for iOS, Android, Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, BlackBerry OS, WebOS, Newton OS, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile.
Apache Cordova is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordova. Apache Cordova enables software programmers to build hybrid web applications for mobile devices using CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript, instead of relying on platform-specific APIs like those in Android, iOS, or Windows Phone. It enables the wrapping up of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code depending on the platform of the device. It extends the features of HTML and JavaScript to work with the device. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native mobile application nor purely Web-based. They are not native because all layout rendering is done via Web views instead of the platform's native UI framework. They are not Web apps because they are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs. Mixing native and hybrid code snippets has been possible since version 1.9.
MoSync is a discontinued free and open-source software development kit (SDK) for mobile applications. It is integrated with the Eclipse development environment. The framework produces native mobile applications for multiple platforms using C/C++, HTML5 scripting and any combination thereof. The target group for MoSync are both web developers looking to enter the mobile space, as well as the ordinary PC/Mac desktop developer with knowledge in C/C++ development.
Titanium SDK is an open-source framework that allows the creation of native mobile applications on platforms iOS and Android from a single JavaScript codebase. It is presently developed by non-profit software foundation TiDev, Inc.
RemObjects Software is an American software company founded in 2002 by Alessandro Federici and Marc Hoffman. It develops and offers tools and libraries for software developers on a variety of development platforms, including Embarcadero Delphi, Microsoft .NET, Mono, and Apple's Xcode.
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was released exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed. Symbian was used by many major mobile phone brands, like Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and above all by Nokia. It was also prevalent in Japan by brands including Fujitsu, Sharp and Mitsubishi. As a pioneer that established the smartphone industry, it was the most popular smartphone OS on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, at a time when smartphones were in limited use, when it was overtaken by iOS and Android. It was notably less popular in North America.
Sencha Touch is a user interface (UI) JavaScript library, or web framework, specifically built for the Mobile Web. It can be used by Web developers to develop user interfaces for mobile web applications that look and feel like native applications on supported mobile devices. It is based on web standards such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The goal of Sencha Touch is to facilitate quick and easy development of HTML5 based mobile apps which run on Android, iOS, Windows, Tizen and BlackBerry devices, simultaneously allowing a native look and feel to the apps.
Android software development is the process by which applications are created for devices running the Android operating system. Google states that "Android apps can be written using Kotlin, Java, and C++ languages" using the Android software development kit (SDK), while using other languages is also possible. All non-Java virtual machine (JVM) languages, such as Go, JavaScript, C, C++ or assembly, need the help of JVM language code, that may be supplied by tools, likely with restricted API support. Some programming languages and tools allow cross-platform app support. Third party tools, development environments, and language support have also continued to evolve and expand since the initial SDK was released in 2008. The official Android app distribution mechanism to end users is Google Play; it also allows staged gradual app release, as well as distribution of pre-release app versions to testers.
Meme IDE is a software platform for developing mobile applications.
Codename One is an open-source cross-platform framework aiming to provide write once, run anywhere code for various mobile and desktop operating systems. It was created by the co-founders of the Lightweight User Interface Toolkit (LWUIT) project, Chen Fishbein and Shai Almog, and was first announced on January 13, 2012. It was described at the time by the authors as "a cross-device platform that allows you to write your code once in Java and have it work on all devices specifically: iPhone/iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7 and 8, J2ME devices, Windows Desktop, Mac OS, and Web. The biggest goals for the project are ease of use/RAD, deep integration with the native platform and speed."
Appcelerator is a privately held mobile technology company based in San Jose, California. Its main products are Titanium, an open-source software development kit for cross-platform mobile development, and the Appcelerator Platform.
NativeScript is an open-source framework to develop mobile apps on the iOS and Android platforms. It was originally conceived and developed by Progress. At the end of 2019 responsibility for the NativeScript project was taken over by long-time Progress partner, nStudio. In December 2020 nStudio also oversaw the induction of NativeScript into OpenJS Foundation as an Incubating Project. NativeScript apps are built using JavaScript, or by using any programming language that transpiles to JavaScript, such as TypeScript. NativeScript supports the Angular and Vue JavaScript frameworks. Mobile applications built with NativeScript result in fully native apps, which use the same APIs as if they were developed in Xcode or Android Studio. Additionally, software developers can re-purpose third-party libraries from CocoaPods, Maven, and npm.js in their mobile applications without the need for wrappers.
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It can be used to develop cross platform applications from a single codebase for the web, Fuchsia, Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. First described in 2015, Flutter was released in May 2017. Flutter is used internally by Google in apps such as Google Pay and Google Earth as well as by other software developers including ByteDance and Alibaba.
