Qt Reference Documentation

# Support for Mac OS X

## Qt on Mac OS X

Qt is a comprehensive application and UI framework for developing Mac applications that can also be deployed across many other desktop and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code. Use the code from one single code-base and rebuild for all supported Windows versions and other platforms.

## Getting Started on Mac

- Supported Mac OS X platforms - Qt supports a wide range of Mac platform variants.
- Qt for Mac OS X Requirements - Software required to run Qt on Mac OS X.
- Installing Qt for X11 Platforms - Build Qt for Mac OS X development.
- Platform and Compiler Notes - Mac OS X - Platform specific notes.
- Getting started

## Key Features for Mac OS X Development

### Integrated Development Tools

Qt includes a set of integrated development tools to speed development on the Mac platform.

- Qt Designer provides a drag and drop visual GUI builder.
- Qt Linguist provides internationalization and translation features.
- Qt Assistant is a customizable HTML help file reader providing the complete Qt documentation offline.

### Cross-Platform Development using Qt Creator

Qt Creator is a complete Cross-platform IDE included in the Qt SDK. The IDE allows programmers to create, build, debug and run Qt applications accross all supported platforms.

### Rich Class Library

The Qt class library includes all the functionality needed to build advanced GUI applications.

- Complete set of customizable UI controls/widgets
- 3D graphics support with OpenGL integration
- Powerful multi-threading features
- 2D graphics canvas capable of handling millions of items
- Integrated Phonon multimedia framework
- WebKit integration
- Networking, XML and database functionality
- ECMA standard scripting engine

#### Supports Intel Hardware and Universal Binaries

Qt is written without making assumptions about the number representation, endianness or architecture of the underlying processor. To support Intel hardware on the Apple platforms, Qt customers simply need to recompile their apps.

Additional Cross-Platform and Platform-Specific Development information.

Note: Qt also provides support for 64-bit applications on top of Cocoa APIs.