BigZaphod/Chameleon
Chameleon is a port of Apple's UIKit for iOS (and some minimal related frameworks) to Mac OS X. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
32/100
- Activity 0
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 5644
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 4159
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
3452 stars · 568 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
Chameleon is a port of Apple's iOS UIKit framework (plus minimal related frameworks) to Mac OS X, designed as a drop-in replacement to ease porting iOS apps to the desktop. It was originally built by The Iconfactory to share the codebase of Twitterrific between Mac and iOS.
Use cases
- port an iOS app to Mac OS X with minimal code changes
- reuse UIKit-based code on the desktop
- share one codebase between iOS and Mac apps
- adapt iOS UI conventions to native Mac behavior
- ship a Mac App Store app built from iOS code
When to choose
- you have an older iOS 3.2-era UIKit app you want to bring to OS X quickly
- you want a drop-in UIKit substitute on the Mac with native-feeling adaptations like UIAlertView via NSAlert
When to avoid
- you target modern iOS APIs - Chameleon only covers roughly iOS 3.2-era UIKit
- you need a maintained solution - the project has had no releases since 2015
- you're starting a new cross-platform Mac/iOS project - use Swift, Catalyst, or multiplatform frameworks instead
Facets
library · maturity abandoned
ui-components mobile-framework cross-platform desktop-applications developer-tools cpp uikit objective-c ios-to-mac-porting appkit drop-in-replacement macos
2 sources
- readme: https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon · fetched 2026-08-28 · 607e2886e8e0
- homepage: http://chameleonproject.org/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 75014ce72ce6
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| BigZaphod/Chameleon | main | 32 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="BigZaphod/Chameleon")
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem