Intro to smart card integration
For devices with iOS 16.1, iPadOS 16, macOS 10.15, or later, Apple offers native support for personal identity verification (PIV) smart cards, USB CCID class-compliant readers, and hard tokens that support the PIV standard. PIV is an open standard widely used in commercial and government organizations for two-factor authentication, digital signing, and encryption. For Mac computers, built-in support for smart cards is based on the CryptoTokenKit framework, which has been extended to enable smart cards support without any additional software.
Note: When using smart cards with iPhone or iPad, some desktop CCID class-compliant readers may require the use of a powered USB hub to address increased power requirements.
Smart cards and accessory security
Accessory security is a feature of macOS 13 or later that helps protect your Mac against any potentially malicious external Thunderbolt, USB, or—in macOS 13.3 or later—SD Extended Capacity “SDXC” cards by requiring user approval before the accessory can communicate with the macOS. To guarantee that smart card operations work as expected with this new feature, accessory security won’t function if a com.apple.security.smartcard.plist file is detected (in /Library/Preferences/) at startup. Removing the file reenables accessory security. For more information, see Manage accessory access.
Developing app support for smart cards
If you’re a developer interested in using the CryptoTokenKit framework to support smart cards, see CryptoTokenKit on the Apple Developer website.