Inspect CoreMaterial recipes as source and resolved JSON, and preview their base material with the native system renderer. The Layer tab shows live filters and inputs; preview controls adjust weight, transparency, and the background.
macOS 14, iOS 17, watchOS 10, or visionOS 1 and later. Building requires Xcode with Swift 6.3 or later. Rendering uses the system's private CoreMaterial framework, so results can vary between OS versions.
Open MaterialViewer.xcodeproj. Use MaterialViewer
for Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro, and MaterialViewer Watch for the
standalone Apple Watch app. On macOS, you can also use:
./run.sh
./run.sh /path/to/example.materialrecipeThe app opens the running system's CoreMaterial resources by default. Use the sidebar to browse recipes and JSON to inspect source, resolved values, and live layers. Open can select files and folders on macOS, iOS, and visionOS; watchOS browses the system resources. Set your signing team in common.xcconfig if needed.
swift run materialviewer --check
swift run materialviewer --check /path/to/example.materialrecipe--check prints layer JSON for each recipe and a summary, and exits with a
nonzero status on failures. With no input path, it checks the system framework.
Without arguments, the CLI prints help and exits.
The macOS app includes an independent CLI at Contents/Helpers/materialviewer.
You can copy that binary and run it outside the app. Other platforms do not
build or embed the CLI.
See AGENTS.md for project structure, build details, and validation.