RayMol

RayMol is a native macOS · iPad · iPhone reimagining of the PyMOL molecular visualization system — a SwiftUI front end driving the real PyMOL engine through Metal, with an embedded CPython runtime so the full pymol Python API runs on-device.

It is a fork of open-source PyMOL: the C++ rendering and chemistry core is preserved, the OpenGL pipeline is replaced with a modern Metal renderer, and a touch- and pointer-native UI is built on top.

Highlights

• Metal rendering pipeline — impostor ray-cast spheres & cylinders, tessellated cartoon tubes, MSAA, SSAO, real-time shadow mapping, order- independent transparency, and toon/silhouette outlines.
• Hardware ray tracing — real-time ambient occlusion + shadows via a Metal acceleration structure (metal_raytrace) on Apple-silicon GPUs, plus a Metal-accelerated hi-res ray export.
• Native, responsive UI — a SwiftUI inspector for per-structure representations, a sequence panel, interactive measurements, a timeline / movie builder, and an adaptive layout spanning Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
• Raymond, the AI assistant (experimental, off by default) — an in-app copilot that drives PyMOL via natural language.
• Theme Studio — a live-preview theming system (Classic · Paper · Sunset · Dawn presets + custom themes) controlling both app chrome and molecular defaults.

Building

The cross-platform app lives in swiftui/ (Xcode project + embedded-Python tooling). The PyMOL core builds as before:

• App: open swiftui/PyMOLViewer.xcodeproj and build the PyMOLViewer_macOS / PyMOLViewer_iOS scheme.
• Core / classic PyMOL: see INSTALL.

Contributing

See DEVELOPERS.

Credits & License

RayMol is built on PyMOL, Copyright (c) Schrödinger, LLC, and is published under the same BSD-like license — see LICENSE. PyMOL is a trademark of Schrödinger, LLC; RayMol is an independent fork and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Schrödinger.