what's new in Metal?
Asked on 06/16/2025
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At WWDC 2025, Apple introduced several new features and enhancements in Metal 4, focusing on rendering, machine learning, and gaming. Here are some of the key updates:
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Metal 4 Overview:
- Metal 4 introduces a new command structure with explicit memory management, allowing for richer and more complex visuals. It supports devices with Apple M1 and later, as well as A14 Bionic and later. Discover Metal 4.
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Rendering for Immersive Apps:
- New capabilities for rendering immersive content on Apple Visual Pro, including hover effects for interactive objects and support for dynamic render quality. What’s new in Metal rendering for immersive apps.
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Machine Learning Integration:
- Metal 4 allows seamless integration of machine learning workloads into Metal pipelines. The ML command encoder enables entire machine learning networks to run directly on the GPU timeline. Combine Metal 4 machine learning and graphics.
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Gaming Enhancements:
- Metal 4 provides new features for gaming, such as MetalFX upscaling and frame interpolation, which help achieve higher resolutions and frame rates. It also includes ray tracing enhancements and a new MetalFX denoise upscaler. Go further with Metal 4 games.
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Resource Management and Debugging:
- Metal 4 introduces efficient resource management tools like argument tables and residency sets, and provides enhanced debugging tools for machine learning applications. Explore Metal 4 games.
These updates make Metal 4 a powerful tool for developers looking to create immersive and high-performance applications on Apple platforms.
What’s new in Metal rendering for immersive apps
Discover the latest improvements in Metal rendering for immersive apps with Compositor Services. Learn how to add hover effects to highlight your app’s interactive elements, and how to render in higher fidelity with dynamic render quality. Find out about the new progressive immersion style. And explore how you can bring immersive experiences to macOS apps by directly rendering Metal content from Mac to Vision Pro. To get the most out of this session, first watch “Discover Metal for immersive apps” from WWDC23.
Combine Metal 4 machine learning and graphics
Learn how to seamlessly combine machine learning into your graphics applications using Metal 4. We’ll introduce the tensor resource and ML encoder for running models on the GPU timeline alongside your rendering and compute work. Discover how shader ML lets you embed neural networks directly within your shaders for advanced effects and performance gains. We’ll also show new debugging tools for Metal 4 ML workloads in action using an example app.
Discover Metal 4
Learn how to get started leveraging the powerful new features of Metal 4 in your existing Metal apps. We’ll cover how Metal enables you to get the most out of Apple silicon and program the hardware more efficiently. You’ll also learn how Metal 4 provides you with new capabilities to integrate machine learning into your Metal code.