In order to stay multi-platform, Skia supports several (platform-dependent) back-ends. These include:
Skia is most similar in purpose to Cairo or Pathfinder (meaning that it focuses on drawing) rather than to other more elaborate APIs like that of Qt that provide their own widgets and UI description language etc.4
The library is used as of 2023[update] in Google Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromiumOS, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Android, Firefox OS, Flutter, Ladybird5 Avalonia (from Alpha 4), LibreOffice (from version 7.0) and RAD Studio6(since version 12.0).
Skia is a romanisation of the word 'shadow' in Greek (Σκιά).
Skia Inc, developers of the Skia Graphics Engine, was founded in 2004 by Mike Reed and Cary Clark in Chapel Hill North Carolina, before being acquired by Google in 2005.8
"Skia Graphics Library". skia.org. Retrieved 2020-11-01. https://skia.org ↩
Malik, Om (2 Sep 2008). "Google Open Sources Skia Graphics Engine". gigaom. Retrieved 31 August 2011. http://gigaom.com/2008/09/02/google-open-sources-skia-graphics-engine/ ↩
"Specialized Builds". Skia. Retrieved 2022-01-18. https://skia.org/docs/user/special/ ↩
"The Skia 2D Graphics Library From Google - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 19 April 2018. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTM0Mw ↩
"Skia Documentation". skia.org. Retrieved 20 April 2023. https://skia.org/docs/ ↩
"RAD Studio". embarcadero.com. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio ↩
"CanvasKit - Skia + WebAssembly". skia.org. Retrieved 2021-09-03. https://skia.org/docs/user/modules/canvaskit/ ↩
"Inside Google's Chapel Hill outpost: A growing success story | WRAL TechWire". 2017-05-24. Retrieved 2021-10-27. https://www.wraltechwire.com/2017/05/24/inside-googles-chapel-hill-outpost-a-growing-success-story/ ↩