Accessibility Inspector vs apitrace

Accessibility Inspector is Apple’s free macOS tool for examining accessibility information in app interfaces. It displays an element’s accessibility properties, available actions, and position in the view hierarchy. Audits identify common issues such as insufficient contrast, clipped text, and missing descriptions. Results can be saved as HTML reports containing summaries, screenshots, issue descriptions, and fix suggestions. Accessibility audits can also run in UI tests through performAccessibilityAudit(for:_:). The target menu includes apps on Mac and selected iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, or tvOS devices. Open it from Xcode through Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Accessibility Inspector. Apple’s listing describes Xcode as Mac-only, requiring macOS 26.2 or later and an Apple M1 chip or later, and labels it Free. Clearing reported issues does not prove complete accessibility; Apple recommends additional checks with assistive apps such as VoiceOver.

apitrace records OpenGL, Direct3D and DirectDraw API calls in trace files for replay and examination. Recorded calls can be replayed on another machine; OpenGL traces can also be replayed across operating systems. Its tools let users inspect graphics state and call data, view framebuffers and textures, edit trace files and profile performance. Coverage varies across APIs and operations: the feature matrix spans OpenGL 1.0–4.5, OpenGL ES 1.0–3.0, Direct3D 7–11.x and DirectDraw. Command-line profiling can capture frame, GPU, CPU and pixels-drawn data, with shader-profile formatting available through a script. The operating-system matrix lists Linux, OS X and Windows for tracing, replay, command-line and GUI use. Windows and Linux binaries are available for x86_64 and Arm64, with Windows x86 binaries also provided. The open-source project is licensed under MIT. One stated limitation is that programmatic Direct3D capture interfaces are unsupported. The maintainer says patches, issues and requests are handled as time permits, and the project links to a manual, bug-reporting guide, source-hacking guide, wiki and mailing list.