Day 4 : How to create iOS AR Applications on Windows using ARkit.

Can you make iOS apps on a windows machine? The short answer is Yes.

This is part of a 30 day sprint where we try to publish 30 projects in 30 days, this means building full projects from scratch. Double checking the code, writing the tutorial and then posting it . If there are any typos do let us know and I hope you enjoy this tutorial and project.

Introduction

Unity is a versatile and very powerful game engine to make cross-platform apps that can run on most of the platforms that exist out there. Especially for creating games and applications. With the AR boom taking off and with support from Apple and Google, Unity has now become the go-to tool for the development of AR applications. We already have a series of tutorials on how to get started to make a Universal AR App here.

iOS being a huge platform offers a premium user base through its app store. That makes it the most sought-after mobile app store platform. And by far the most asked question I get is –

Can I make iOS apps on a Windows PC?

The Long answer? Well, that depends on how much time you’re willing to put into it. The level of commitment you need to have to pull this off is going to be very high. Because it takes a lot of time to set up and needs at least some technical understanding.

But if you’re not willing to put up with the frustration you’re better off buying a mac and calling it a day. 

Don’t get me wrong, Mac’s are amazing and macOS is simply elegant, but let’s be honest, not every one of us can afford a Mac. That’s where this article comes in.

I will describe a few ways you can develop for iOS on a Windows PC and you can pick what works for you.

iOS Build Process

To actually deploy an application on your iPhone you will need Xcode, which is a mac only software. This is where the restriction comes in. You see when you build for android using Unity, it uses Gradle, the same system used by Android Studio to create a .apk file

But for iOS Unity creates an Xcode project that you have to then open with Xcode and build it onto your device.

Using Windows for Development and a cheap Mac for Building

You can still write code and do all the regular stuff within unity if you want to build for iOS but are on windows. Only thing is, you can’t open Xcode, well because simply it doesn’t exist on Windows.

An option you have is to buy a very cheap Mac mini off of eBay and use that solely for builds. You would use Windows to code and make your app, and then use the cheapo mac mini to open Xcode and build it onto your device or push it to Testflight or the App Store itself.

The way you would set this up is by using Git. Create a new repository for the Xcode build folder and push the changes through windows. Then you would pull the changes on the mac and rebuild with Xcode.

Virtual Machine

Another option is to use a VM for building through Xcode. The thing is, macOS doesn’t support VM’s and there is no first-party support. But thankfully, for us, the dev community has found a way. There are plenty of guides out there.

Basically, you would run macOS on a VM using VMWare.

Note that, the performance here isn’t that great. Even a cheap mac mini will probably outperform the VM. Hence, I recommend if you’re going this route, do your development on Windows. And then use the mac VM just for running Xcode and building the app.