Platform support

MasonKit runs on iOS, Android and Windows. The Rust layout engine (mason-core, built on taffy) is shared by all three; each platform has its own native view layer that draws, measures text and handles input.

Requirements

Platform	NativeScript runtime	OS minimum	Native library shipped in the package
iOS	@nativescript/ios 8.0+	iOS 15.6	platforms/ios/Mason.xcframework (iOS device, iOS simulator, visionOS device and simulator slices)
Android	@nativescript/android 8.0+	API 21	platforms/android/masonkit-release.aar (arm, arm64, x86, x86_64)
Windows	@nativescript/windows 9.1+	Windows 10/11 with the Windows App SDK (WinUI 3)	platforms/windows/{x64,arm64}/NativeScript.Mason.{dll,winmd}

The runtime minimums come from the nativescript.platforms field of the package's package.json. The OS minimums come from the native projects: MinimumOSVersion in the xcframework and minSdk in the AAR's Gradle build.

The Android library also depends on Glide (images), Gson and org.nativescript:fontmanager; these are declared in platforms/android/include.gradle and resolved by Gradle when you build your app.

Feature differences

Almost everything in these docs behaves the same on every platform. The differences below are the ones confirmed in the native code.

Feature	iOS	Android	Windows
Flexbox, grid, block, inline flow, float	Yes	Yes	Yes
position: fixed / sticky	Yes	Yes	Yes
writing-mode: vertical-rl / vertical-lr, vertical containers	Yes	Yes	Yes
text-orientation, text-combine-upright	Yes	Yes	Yes
text-spacing-trim	Yes	Yes (font's halt)	Yes (fonts with halt/vhal)
Floats in vertical text	Yes	Yes	Yes
mask-*, clip-path, mask-border-*, border-image	Yes	Yes	Yes (see notes)
SVG url() backgrounds and Img	Built-in static SVG reader	Built-in static SVG reader	Direct2D SVG renderer
backdrop-filter	Yes (snapshot of the content behind)	Yes (RenderEffect on API 31+, software snapshot below)	Yes
box-shadow backend switch (setBoxShadowRenderMode)	No-op	Yes	No-op (always Composition)
<details> / <summary>	Native	Native	Native
<input> types	All types in InputType are mapped	All types mapped	All types mapped

Notes:

• backdrop-filter on iOS renders a snapshot of what is behind the element through Core Image, refreshed while the screen changes and idle otherwise. The snapshot also includes content painted above the element, skips Metal-backed layers, and does not refresh for animations that run only on the render server.
• backdrop-filter on Android below API 31 (Android 12) draws from a downscaled software snapshot, with the same filter functions.
• Mask hit testing. As in browsers, clip-path limits where an element can be tapped and masks do not.
• url(#id) masks and clip paths. There is no in-document SVG to reference, so they are none on every platform.
• SVG. Shapes, paths, groups, transforms, fills, strokes, opacity, gradients, patterns, masks, markers, text, <use>, <symbol>, <clipPath>, <style> sheets with simple selectors and raster data-URL <image> work on every platform. Filters and <textPath> are not supported anywhere.
• SVG text uses the platform's fonts, so glyphs differ between platforms as fonts do. iOS and Android find app fonts by family name; Windows uses installed fonts only, with serif, sans-serif and monospace mapped to Times New Roman, Arial and Consolas as Chrome does.
• SVG on Windows. A pattern on a stroke uses the paint's fallback color, and a mask inside a masked element is not applied.
• Vertical writing modes. Cell sizes come from the font's vertical metrics where it has them, so they can differ between platforms as the fonts do. See Writing modes.

Platform-specific APIs

The box-shadow backend can be switched on Android (iOS and Windows export both functions as no-ops):

import { setBoxShadowRenderMode, setBoxShadowSoftwareRasterScale } from '@triniwiz/nativescript-masonkit';

if (__ANDROID__) {
  // 'auto' | 'render-node' | 'software'
  setBoxShadowRenderMode('auto');
  setBoxShadowSoftwareRasterScale(null);
}

More

• Windows: how the Windows component is packaged and what differs there.
• Using Mason natively: driving the Kotlin and Swift libraries without NativeScript.