Apple Design Inputs

Apple Input and Interaction

Apply the skill

Identify the devices and input combinations people actually use. Preserve standard gestures, shortcuts, and hardware meanings. Read each relevant input reference and define an alternative for actions that otherwise depend on a hidden gesture or unavailable accessory.

Distinguish targeting, focus, selection, and activation. Specify immediate feedback and behavior during cancelled, repeated, or interrupted input. For precision tools, consider handedness and how changing input devices affects the same task.

Verify capabilities and settings before assuming a hardware feature exists. Simulators and screenshots cannot establish tactile quality, ergonomic comfort, or real-world proximity reliability; document those limits and test on hardware when available.

Topic references

Select the topic that matches the design decision; do not load this entire list by default.

• [Gestures](references/gestures.md)
• [Keyboards](references/keyboards.md)
• [Pointing devices](references/pointing-devices.md)
• [Focus and selection](references/focus-and-selection.md)
• [Apple Pencil and Scribble](references/apple-pencil-and-scribble.md)
• [Action button](references/action-button.md)
• [Camera Control](references/camera-control.md)
• [Digital Crown](references/digital-crown.md)
• [Remotes](references/remotes.md)
• [Gyroscope and accelerometer](references/gyro-and-accelerometer.md)
• [Nearby interactions](references/nearby-interactions.md)

Source use

These references are original operational summaries of Apple’s public HIG, checked on 2026-09-08. They are guidance for design decisions, not a reproduced manual or a guarantee of App Store acceptance.

Read only the topic references relevant to the current task. Each links to the full official page. Consult that page for exact specifications, platform exceptions, assets, and version-sensitive behavior; use current official developer documentation for APIs and availability. If live documentation is unavailable, state the snapshot date and identify assumptions instead of inventing current requirements.

The user’s product goals, selected framework, and authorized scope remain controlling. Distinguish a source recommendation from a hard platform requirement and from your own proposed implementation.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: CarlosZiegler
• Source: CarlosZiegler/apple-hig-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.