Apple opens Foundation Models framework to Claude, Gemini and other LLMs

Apple published details of its Foundation Models framework, a native Swift API for adding large language models to apps. Previously limited to Apple's own models, the framework now reaches third-party server models including Claude and Gemini through the same API, with tool calling and guided generation supported. Any provider can ship a Swift package that conforms to the Language Model protocol.

The release also adds image understanding with on-device OCR and barcode reading through Vision, Dynamic Profiles that swap model, tools and instructions mid-session while keeping the transcript, an Evaluations framework for testing prompts, and the fm command line tool in macOS 27. An open-source utilities package and a Python SDK are also available.