Introduction

The PyObjC project aims to provide a bridge between the Python and Objective-C programming languages on macOS. The bridge is intended to be fully bidirectional, allowing the Python programmer to take full advantage of the power provided by various Objective-C based toolkits and the Objective-C programmer transparent access to Python based functionality.

PyObjC not only includes the basic bridge, but also bindings to most Apple frameworks on macOS.

The most important usage of this is writing Cocoa GUI applications on macOS in pure Python. See our tutorial for an example of this.

Release information

PyObjC 8.5 was released on 2022-04-19. See the changelog for more information. PyObjC 8 supports Python 3.6 and later.

PyObjC 5.3 is the last version supporting Python 2 and was released on 2019-10-16.

Supported platforms

PyObjC supports Python 3.6 or later and does not support Python 2. PyObjC does not support other python implementation such as PyPy and Jython.

PyObjC is regularly tested on macOS 10.14 and should work on macOS 10.9 or later for the i386 and x86_64 architectures.

PyObjC only supports macOS, and is not supported on other platforms (iOS, Linux, …).

General documentation

• Installing PyObjC
• What’s new in PyObjC
• An introduction to PyObjC
• PyObjC protocol support
• PyObjC support for “blocks”
• PyObjC support for vector/SIMD types
• Converting values between Python and Objective-C
• Support for FSRef and FSSpec
• Generated types for C types
• Introspecting PyObjC
• Object-graph serialization
• Key-Value Observing and Python
• PyObjC metadata system
• PyObjC Tutorials
• Exceptions in Cocoa code
• “import Quartz” or “import CoreGraphics”
• Using NSXPCInterface from Python
• Integration with ctypes
• Examples overview
• Overview of macOS frameworks and their wrappers
• Code Signing and Notarizing
• API Notes for PyObjC framework wrappers
• Dealing with API deprecations
• The PyObjC core team
• The release workflow for PyObjC

API documentation

• Python API
  • objc – The PyObjC bridge
  • PyObjCTools – Utilities
• Context Managers for CoreGraphics
• Utility methods for threading
  • Safe replacements for stock NSObject methods
  • Enhanced methods
• API Description for PyObjCTools.AppCategories
  • Introduction
  • Additional methods on NSGraphicsContext
  • Context-manager for NSAnimationContext
• API Description for PyObjCTools.FndCategories
  • Introduction
  • Additional methods on NSAffineTransform

Historical documents

• PyObjC with InterfaceBuilder
• (Historical) Objective-C Garbage Collection

PyObjC Development

PyObjC development is hosted at GitHub, in particular at <https://github.com/ronaldoussoren/pyobjc/>.

Important resources:

• Issue tracker

• PyObjC-dev mailing list

  A low-volume mailinglist for PyObjC development.

• Mailing list for the PythonMac SIG

  A mailing list for anyone developing with Python on macOS.

• Repository browser

• Creating a checkout of the repository:

  $ git clone https://github.com/ronaldoussoren/pyobjc
  

  You can then use the “install.py” at the root of the checkout to install this version of PyObjC.

• Coding style for PyObjC
• Developer Documentation
• Structure of the PyObjC package
• Test coverage information
• How to wrap an Objective-C class library

Indices and tables

• Module Index

• Search Page