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# MTLSamplerState

An instance that defines how a texture should be sampled.

```
protocol MTLSamplerState : NSObjectProtocol, Sendable
```

## Overview

The [`MTLSamplerState`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerState) protocol defines the interface for a lightweight instance used to encode how a shader or compute kernel should sample a texture. To create a sampler state instance:

1. Create an [`MTLSamplerDescriptor`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerDescriptor) instance.
2. Set the desired properties of the sampler descriptor, including filtering options, addressing modes, maximum anisotropy, and level-of-detail parameters.
3. Call the [`makeSamplerState(descriptor:)`](/documentation/Metal/MTLDevice/makeSamplerState(descriptor:)) method of the [`MTLDevice`](/documentation/Metal/MTLDevice) instance.

(Your app does not define a class that implements the [`MTLSamplerState`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerState) protocol.)

You can either release the [`MTLSamplerDescriptor`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerDescriptor) instance or modify its property values and reuse it to create more [`MTLSamplerState`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerState) instances. The descriptor’s properties are only used during instance creation; once created the behavior of a sampler state instance is fixed and cannot be changed.

## Topics

### Identifying the sampler

[`device`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerState/device)

The device object that created the sampler.

[`label`](/documentation/Metal/MTLSamplerState/label)

A string that identifies the sampler.


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