Third-Party Devs Will Be Able to Access iPadOS Apple Pencil Latency Improvements for Art Apps

Apple in iPadOS introduced some performance improvements between the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, cutting latency from 20ms to 9ms with the new software.

Third-party developers who make apps that use the ‌Apple Pencil‌ will also be able to take advantage of some of these latency improvements, Apple software development chief Craig Federighi confirmed last week.

ipadproapplepencil
Federighi shared the information in a response to an email sent by Artstudio Pro developer Cladio Juliano, who tweeted what Federighi had to say last week. The info was highlighted today in a tweet by developer Steve Troughton-Smith.

In the email, Federighi explains that third-party developers have had access to predicted touches via UIKit since iOS 9, and with iOS 13, developers will receive the "latest and greatest" touch prediction advancements in minimizing PencilKit drawing latency.

Federighi explains just how Apple introduced the latency improvements, and he points out that there's a small gap of 4ms that developers won't have access to at the current time because Apple didn't have a way to safely expose the capability to developers. From Federighi's email:

Note that we achieve low latency through a combination of several techniques: Metal rendering optimizations, touch prediction, and mid-frame event processing. Third-party developers can achieve similar low-latency drawing experiences by taking advantage of Metal rendering and touch prediction best practices covered in the WWDC Sessions I've referenced below.

With these you can achieve nearly all of the improvements you've seen in PencilKit drawing with your own renderer. (There does remain a small gap: 4 ms of our improvement comes from a technique called mid-frame event processing; we are looking for ways to expose this capability to third party engines in the future, but for this year this one was only safely achievable through tight integration within our frameworks).

For developers, the WWDC sessions Federighi suggests include PencilKit, Adopting Predicted Touches, and Metal Performance Optimization.

In a nutshell, the information shared by Federighi confirms that third-party apps that take advantage of the ‌Apple Pencil‌ will be getting some of the same latency improvements that we'll be seeing when using the ‌Apple Pencil‌ within native functions like Markup.

The ‌Apple Pencil‌ latency improvements are built into iPadOS, the version of iOS 13 that is designed to run on the iPad. All of Apple's current iPads support the ‌Apple Pencil‌. ‌iPad Pro‌ models work with the ‌Apple Pencil‌ 2, while the 6th-generation ‌iPad‌, iPad mini, and iPad Air work with the original ‌Apple Pencil‌.

Related Forum: iOS 13

Popular Stories

iOS 26 on iPhone Feature

Here's When iOS 26 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: Out Now!]

Monday September 15, 2025 12:00 am PDT by
Update 10:06 a.m.: iOS 26 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Today's the day! Apple is about to release iOS 26, which will deliver the biggest redesign since iOS 7 and bring a range of new features and improvements to iPhones worldwide. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at last week's iPhone event that...
Tim Cook Rainbow

Apple Reportedly Plans to Launch These 10 Products in 'Coming Months'

Sunday September 14, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple's annual September event is now in the rearview mirror, with the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple Watch SE 3, and AirPods Pro 3 set to launch this Friday, September 19. As always, there is more to come. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple plans to release many products in the...
apple n1 chip

Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation

Saturday September 13, 2025 10:01 am PDT by
The latest iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air models are equipped with Apple's all-new N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread connectivity. However, the chip has a Wi-Fi 7 bandwidth limitation. According to FCC documents reviewed by MacRumors, the N1 chip in all of the new iPhone models supports up to 160 MHz channel bandwidth for Wi-Fi 7, short of the...
iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

Apple Says Installing iOS 26 Might Impact Battery Life

Monday September 15, 2025 10:56 am PDT by
In the iOS 26 release notes, Apple is warning iPhone users that installing the new software might have a temporary impact on battery life, which is normal. A new support document explains that major iOS updates require background setup like indexing data and files for search, downloading new assets, and updating apps. Further, Apple says that new features could require more resources,...
iphone 17 lineup

iPhone 17 Models Launch on September 19 With These New Features

Friday September 12, 2025 7:58 am PDT by
Apple will launch its new iPhone 17 lineup and ultra-thin iPhone Air in stores on Friday, September 19, and the company has already shown off the new devices at its fall event, which ran with the the tagline "Awe dropping." The iPhone 17 series brings a host of new features and enhancements. Here's a rundown of the biggest upgrades and changes: iPhone 17 Display Changes The iPhone...
iphone air all colors

iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Now Facing Extended Delivery Estimates

Saturday September 13, 2025 11:43 am PDT by
iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air pre-orders began on Friday in the U.S. and many other countries. iPhone 17 Pro Max delivery estimates quickly slipped beyond the Friday, September 19 launch day for those who had yet to place an order, and now the rest of the new models have started to follow suit. As of shortly after 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time today, select iPhone 17, ...
iPhone 17 Pro Air Boxes

iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Boxes Revealed

Sunday September 14, 2025 1:36 pm PDT by
T-Mobile President Jon Freier today shared real-world photos of Apple's boxes for the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 models, which launch on Friday. Image Credit: Jon Freier Apple has typically included iPhone box renders in its product environmental reports, but it did not do so for the latest models. However, Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program page does offer some images of the boxes, ...
iPhone 17 Pro Colors

Didn't Pre-Order a New iPhone Yet? Here's How Long the Wait is Now

Friday September 12, 2025 6:11 am PDT by
iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air pre-orders began at 5 a.m. Pacific Time in the U.S. and many other countries today. If you have yet to place a pre-order, you might face a longer wait now, depending on your desired configuration. As of shortly after 6 a.m. Pacific Time today, nearly all iPhone 17 Pro Max configurations on Apple's online store in the U.S. are facing ...

Top Rated Comments

thisisnotmyname Avatar
81 months ago
I would have expected that was automatically exposed from the OS. I'm a bit surprised that they had to explicitly make some of those capabilities available to third party developers.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cocky jeremy Avatar
81 months ago
I mean... duh?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
81 months ago
I would have expected that was automatically exposed from the OS. I'm a bit surprised that they had to explicitly make some of those capabilities available to third party developers.
It is, if you use the appropriate control. But developer’s may want to integrate it into their own canvas or controls. In which case it is harder to expose it since things you do in your own code can interfere with the ability of the pen code to get the cycles it needs from the GPU and CPU.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nexusrule Avatar
81 months ago
How nice of Apple. You would think they would limit functionality improvements to their own apps.
I think you don’t know how development works. When you start creating code you can’t always abstract it in a way that’s usable by third party devs through an API. What Federighi meant is right now the code that allow for that part of delay reduction is split between different of Apple software technologies. To be made safely accessible to others devs it needs to be abstracted, made indipendent, because private frameworks can’t be exposed for security reasons. You build these frameworks after you have the working feature, it’s simply impossible to abstract a solution that doesn’t exist. And this sort of work can require a massive rewrite of some parts of the relevant underlying technologies, and it requires time.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NickName99 Avatar
81 months ago
I love that he gets into such detail. That’s interesting about the 4ms improvement they got using something they apparently can’t expose as a public method without some risk.

Now I’m curious about “mid-frame event processing”, but googling it hasn’t immediately got me anything.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Cayden Avatar
81 months ago
I love that he gets into such detail. That’s interesting about the 4ms improvement they got using something they apparently can’t expose as a public method without some risk.

Now I’m curious about “mid-frame event processing”, but googling it hasn’t immediately got me anything.
Now I’m not sure so take this with a grain of salt, but as an engineer I’m inclined to believe “mid-frame event processing” means they are updating some pixel information (likely just the pixels associated with the pencil) in between frame updates in which all pixel information is updated and displayed. In other words, in between hardware detections of the pencil location, software would update where it presicts the pencil to be on the next update, and it can start looking for the pencil there instead of looking arbitrarily, mean the location can (usually) be found quicker. What I’m not sure about is if these pixels are actually being updated mid-frame or if the processing is simply keeping this information stored until the next frame is ready to update. I can’t see how the pixels could be updated mid-frame unless they had an individual refresh rate, so I’m inclined to believe the second case. If it’s the second case, it would make sense why Apple doesn’t want to give developers access to this, as this could quickly lead to timing errors between the software and hardware interrupts, such that it would only work within Apple’s framework and not an arbitrary code framework.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)