System Compatibility for iOS

For PSPDFKit for iOS and iPadOS, PSPDFKit for Mac Catalyst, and PSPDFKit for visionOS, we generally support n-1 versions of Apple’s operating systems.

(*) Preliminary support only

As of June 2023, more than 94 percent of all active devices introduced in the last four years can use your product if your app supports iOS 15 upward. See Mixpanel statistics or Apple’s official device statistics for details.

It’s not possible for your app to support an older version of iOS that isn’t supported by PSPDFKit and then only link with PSPDFKit when running on newer iOS versions.

Architectures and Device Support

PSPDFKit supports ARM64 and x86_64. Versions up to 11.5 included bitcode support. Versions up to 8.2.3 included 32-bit architectures, ARMv7, and i386.

PSPDFKit for iOS supports all available iOS devices and form factors and includes many adjustments for optimal display for small and large screens.

For a detailed overview of iOS device compatibility, see the list of supported iOS releases.

Xcode Support

Beginning 29 April 2024, Apple requires that all apps submitted to the App Store be built with Xcode 15 and the iOS 17 SDK.

In general, the most recent build will always require the most recent stable version of Xcode so that we can utilize all the improvements Apple is making on its tools and compiler infrastructure.

UIWebView Usage

Support for UIWebView was removed in v9.0 in September 2019 in favor of WKWebView and SFSafariViewController. In December 2019, Apple announced that UIWebView is no longer accepted in the App Store, saying “The App Store will no longer accept new apps using UIWebView as of April 2020 and app updates using UIWebView as of December 2020.”

Identify Version

Unsure which version you currently use? Learn how you can identify your current version.

Base SDK

The base SDK is usually tied to a version of Xcode and includes specific compiler and linker versions. Apple encodes the base SDK into your application, and frameworks often have behavior specific to a base SDK version to ensure backward compatibility. This is the main reason PSPDFKit is tied to a specific version of Xcode. We use the latest compiler and language improvements and have a very sophisticated use of UIKit, which means we often have to tweak things so that everything runs perfectly whenever the base SDK is updated.

Deployment Target

The deployment target is the minimum version supported by your application. If you see the following warning, it means PSPDFKit has detected that the Xcode version used is not the one we recommend:

PSPDFKit was built to be linked with Xcode X.X. (X).
Your application has been built and linked with a different version (X).
This may result in undefined behavior and bugs and is not supported.
We strongly recommend updating PSPDFKit to a newer version that matches your current Xcode version.
See https://pspdfkit.com/guides/ios/announcements/version-support for details.

This is a conservative warning, as Apple changes behavior based on the base SDK, including minor versions. This might trigger bugs in either Apple’s or PSPDFKit’s frameworks. We err on the side of extreme caution and issue a developer-only warning. We don’t block you from compiling a version of PSPDFKit with a newer version of the SDK; we just discourage it and print a warning.

Troubleshooting 64-Bit Requirements

Apple required 64-bit binaries starting 1 February 2015. Support for 32-bit binaries was dropped with iOS 11. If your deployment target is iOS 11 or later, you must have arm64 in your Info.plist file. Make sure it contains the following entry:

<key>UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities</key>
<array>
    <string>arm64</string>
</array>

If you don’t, App Store Connect will report the error shown below.

ERROR ITMS-90502: “Invalid Bundle. Apps that only contain the arm64 slice must also have ‘arm64’ in the list of UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities in Info.plist.”

Wikipedia’s List of iOS devices article also features an in-depth capability overview.