Setup guide for iOS

This page shows you how to set up your development environment to use MediaPipe Tasks in your iOS applications.

Supported devices and platforms

To create iOS applications with MediaPipe Tasks, your development environment requires the following:

• macOS Mojave 10.14.3 or greater.

• Xcode 10.3 or greater.

• iOS device with at least iOS 12.0. Alternatively, an iOS simulator can handle applications that don't require the device camera.

Developer environment setup

Before running a MediaPipe task on an iOS application, you must either have an existing Xcode project or create a new one on your local machine.

MediaPipe Tasks can only be installed using CocoaPods. You must install CocoaPods 1.12.1 or greater before getting started. For instructions to install CocoaPods on macOS, refer to the CocoaPods installation guide.

Example code setup

The MediaPipe Examples repository contains example iOS applications for MediaPipe tasks.

You can create a project from the example code, build the project, and run the task. The following steps builds the Text Classifier task.

To import and build the example code project:

1. Open the terminal, clone the MediaPipe Examples repository, and navigate to the directory containing the TextClassifier.xcodeproj and Podfile.

   git clone https://github.com/google-ai-edge/mediapipe-samples
   cd mediapipe/examples/text_classification/ios
   

2. Install MediaPipe Tasks using CocoaPods:

   pod install
   

   This command creates a TextClassifier.xcworkspace file in the example project directory.

3. Double-click the TextClassifier.xcworkspace file to open the project in Xcode. If the TextClassifier.xcodeproj file is already open, close it before opening the TextClassifier.xcworkspace file.

4. Select the TextClassifier scheme and choose a physical iOS device or simulator from the toolbar of your project window. When using a physical iOS device, ensure that it is connected to your Mac.

5. Click the Run button in your project's toolbar.

For more instructions on running an app on Xcode, refer to Building and running an app.

MediaPipe Tasks dependencies

MediaPipe Tasks provides two prebuilt libraries for vision and text. The .tflite model file must be located in the bundle of the iOS application that uses the model. Depending on the MediaPipe Tas, add either the vision or text library to the list of pods within the CocoaPods Podfile. For instructions on creating a Podfile with the required pods for your app, refer to Using CocoaPods.

Generative AI tasks

The MediaPipe Tasks Generative AI libraries contain tasks that handle image or text generation. To install the MediaPipe Tasks Generative AI library, add the MediaPipeTasksGenAI and MediaPipeTasksGenAIC pods to your app's target in the Podfile.

LLM Inference API

The MediaPipe LLM Inference task is contained within the MediaPipeTasksGenAI and MediaPipeTasksGenAIC pods.

target 'MyLlmInferenceApp' do
  use_frameworks!
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksGenAI'
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksGenAIC'
end

Vision tasks

The MediaPipe Tasks vision library contains tasks that handle image or video inputs. To install the MediaPipe Tasks vision library, add the MediaPipeTasksVision pod to your app's target in the Podfile.

target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasksVision' do
  use_frameworks!
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksVision'
end

Text tasks

The MediaPipe Tasks text library contains tasks that handle language data in text format. To install the MediaPipe Tasks text library, add the MediaPipeTasksText pod to your app's target in the Podfile

target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasksText' do
  use_frameworks!
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksText'
end

Configure test targets

If your app has a test target, ensure that your Podfile adheres to either of the following implementations to avoid any undesirable behaviour when using a MediaPipe task library.

The simplest implementation is to ensure that the test target is not nested within the main app target that adds the MediaPipe task pod.

target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasks' do
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksVision'
end

target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasksTests' do

end

If the test target must be nested within the main app target, the Podfile must conform to the following implementation:

target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasks' do
  pod 'MediaPipeTasksVision'

    target 'MyAppWithMediaPipeTasksTests' do
      inherit! :none

    end
end

BaseOptions configuration

The BaseOptions allow for general configuration of MediaPipe Task APIs.

Hardware acceleration

On iOS, MediaPipe Tasks only supports running models on standard CPU processors.

Troubleshooting

For help with technical questions related to MediaPipe, visit the discussion group or Stack Overflow for support from the community. To report bugs or make feature requests, file an issue on GitHub.

For help setting up your iOS development environment, visit the Apple Developer Documentation.