Framework

Core Animation

Render, compose, and animate visual elements.

Overview

Core Animation provides high frame rates and smooth animations without burdening the CPU and slowing down your app. Most of the work required to draw each frame of an animation is done for you. You configure animation parameters such as the start and end points, and Core Animation does the rest, handing off most of the work to dedicated graphics hardware, to accelerate rendering. For more details, see Core Animation Programming Guide.

Topics

Layer Basics

class CALayer

An object that manages image-based content and allows you to perform animations on that content.

protocol CALayerDelegate

Methods your app can implement to respond to layer-related events.

class CAConstraint

A representation of a single layout constraint between two layers.

protocol CALayoutManager

Methods that allow an object to manage the layout of a layer and its sublayers.

class CAConstraintLayoutManager

An object that provides a constraint-based layout manager.

protocol CAAction

An interface that allows objects to respond to actions triggered by a CALayer change.

Text, Shapes, and Gradients

class CATextLayer

A layer that provides simple text layout and rendering of plain or attributed strings.

class CAShapeLayer

A layer that draws a cubic Bezier spline in its coordinate space.

class CAGradientLayer

A layer that draws a color gradient over its background color, filling the shape of the layer (including rounded corners)

Animation

class CAAnimation

The abstract superclass for animations in Core Animation.

protocol CAAnimationDelegate

Methods your app can implement to respond when animations start and stop.

class CAPropertyAnimation

An abstract subclass of CAAnimation for creating animations that manipulate the value of layer properties.

class CABasicAnimation

An object that provides basic, single-keyframe animation capabilities for a layer property.

class CAKeyframeAnimation

An object that provides keyframe animation capabilities for a layer object.

class CASpringAnimation

An animation that applies a spring-like force to a layer's properties.

class CATransition

An object that provides an animated transition between a layer's states.

class CAValueFunction

An object that provides a flexible method of defining animated transformations.

Animation Groups

class CAAnimationGroup

An object that allows multiple animations to be grouped and run concurrently.

class CATransaction

A mechanism for grouping multiple layer-tree operations into atomic updates to the render tree.

Animation Timing

func CACurrentMediaTime() -> CFTimeInterval

Returns the current absolute time, in seconds.

class CAMediaTimingFunction

A function that defines the pacing of an animation as a timing curve.

protocol CAMediaTiming

Methods that model a hierarchical timing system, allowing objects to map time between their parent and local time.

class CADisplayLink

A timer object that allows your application to synchronize its drawing to the refresh rate of the display.

Particle Systems

class CAEmitterLayer

A layer that emits, animates, and renders a particle system.

class CAEmitterCell

The definition of a particle emitted by a CAEmitterLayer.

Advanced Layer Options

class CAScrollLayer

A layer that displays scrollable content larger than its own bounds.

class CATiledLayer

A layer that provides a way to asynchronously provide tiles of the layer's content, potentially cached at multiple levels of detail.

class CATransformLayer

Objects used to create true 3D layer hierarchies, rather than the flattened hierarchy rendering model used by other CALayer classes.

class CAReplicatorLayer

A layer that creates a specified number of sublayer copies with varying geometric, temporal, and color transformations.

Metal and OpenGL

class CAMetalLayer

A Core Animation layer that Metal can render into, typically to be displayed onscreen.

protocol CAMetalDrawable

A Metal drawable associated with a Core Animation layer.

class CAEAGLLayer

A layer that supports drawing OpenGL content in iOS and tvOS applications.

Deprecated
class CAEDRMetadata

Metadata describing how extended dynamic range (EDR) values should be tone mapped.

class CAOpenGLLayer

A layer that provides a layer suitable for rendering OpenGL content.

Deprecated
class CARenderer

A layer that allows an application to render a layer tree into a Core OpenGL context.

Remote Display of Layer Content

class CARemoteLayerClient
class CARemoteLayerServer

Transforms

Transforms

Define transform matrices to apply affine transformations to layers in Core Animation.

Quartz Composer

class QCCompositionLayer

A layer that loads, plays, and controls Quartz Composer compositions in a Core Animation layer hierarchy.

Deprecated

Reference

Core Animation Constants
Core Animation Data Types

See Also