Apple ARKit

ARKit is Apple's augmented reality framework for iOS and iPadOS, sitting alongside RealityKit for rendering and customisation, AR Quick Look for placing 3D objects in the real world, and Reality Composer for authoring, with Object Capture producing AR ready 3D models through photogrammetry.

Being part of the operating system rather than a product bought separately is the defining fact about ARKit and it shapes the whole category. Apple describes iOS and iPadOS as the biggest AR platforms in the world, and the reason is not that the framework is better than the alternatives but that every recent iPhone already has it, so an AR feature reaches hundreds of millions of devices with no runtime to bundle and nothing for the user to install.

The split between ARKit and RealityKit is worth understanding before choosing. ARKit handles the understanding of the physical world, while RealityKit handles what is drawn on top of it, exposing custom rendering, Metal shaders and post processing for teams that need control over the pipeline. A developer building a measurement tool needs the first and barely touches the second.

AR Quick Look is the most underrated piece here because it removes the app entirely: a 3D model can be placed in a room straight from Safari or Messages, which is why furniture and footwear retailers adopted it long before they built anything native. Object Capture matters for the same reason, since the bottleneck in retail AR has always been producing thousands of accurate 3D models rather than displaying them.