iOS Prerequisites

This page lists the tools required to build FFmpegKitNext for iOS and iPadOS.

For build commands, see Building iOS & iPadOS. For iOS build options, see nix-ios.sh.

Requirements With Nix

Install Nix on macOS.

The current Apple Nix profile is xcode26. It provides the host build tools used by the build scripts, including autoconf, automake, libtool, pkg-config, gettext, cmake, bison, meson, ninja, nasm, yasm, gperf, python3, perl, ruby, make, patch, curl, wget, git, zip, unzip, tar, gzip and xz.

Xcode still provides the Apple SDKs and Apple compiler toolchain. Install:

• Xcode 26.0 or later
• iOS SDK from the active Xcode installation
• Xcode Command Line Tools

No separate Autotools, CMake, Meson, Ninja, pkg-config or gettext installation is normally required when using the Nix profile.

Requirements Without Nix

Direct iOS builds are supported on macOS. You must install and maintain Xcode and the host build tools yourself.

Install:

• Xcode 26.0 or later
• iOS SDK from the active Xcode installation
• Xcode Command Line Tools

If multiple Xcode versions are installed, select the intended one with xcode-select or set DEVELOPER_DIR.

Install the host build tools used by the scripts. Package names vary by package manager, but the tools are:

bash git curl wget zip unzip tar gzip xz make sed grep which autoconf automake libtool pkg-config gettext cmake bison meson ninja nasm yasm gperf python3 perl ruby patch file find doxygen

Some optional external libraries have extra host-package requirements:

• Autotools regeneration uses autoreconf and may also need autopoint from gettext.
• CMake and Meson based libraries use cmake, meson and ninja.
• gperf is used by fontconfig.
• gtk-doc-tools and libtasn1 may be needed when bootstrapping gnutls on some hosts.
• ragel for harfbuzz
• texinfo for gmp on some hosts
• nasm for x264
• yasm for libvpx and some x265 builds

On Homebrew, gettext tools such as autopoint may not be on PATH by default. Use brew --prefix gettext to add the correct bin and share/aclocal locations for your machine instead of hard-coding an Intel or Apple Silicon prefix.