Hi, I’m working on a real-time head/face tracking pipeline using a standard 2D RGB camera, and I’m trying to better understand how ARKit achieves such stable and responsive results in comparable conditions. To clarify upfront: I’m specifically interested in RGB-only tracking and the underlying vision/ML pipeline. I’m not using TrueDepth or any depth/IR-based sensors, and I’d like to understand how similar stability and responsiveness can be achieved under those constraints. In my current setup, I estimate head pose from RGB frames (facial landmarks + PnP) and apply temporal filtering (e.g., exponential smoothing and Kalman filtering). This significantly reduces jitter, but introduces noticeable latency, especially during faster head movements. What stands out in ARKit is that it appears to maintain both: Very low jitter Very low perceived latency even when operating with camera input alone. I’m trying to understand what techniques might contribute to this behavior. In particular: Does ARKit use predictive tracking (e.g., velocity or acceleration-based pose extrapolation) to compensate for camera and processing delays in RGB-only scenarios? Are there recommended strategies for balancing temporal smoothing and responsiveness without introducing visible lag in camera-based pose estimation pipelines? Is the tracking pipeline internally decoupled from rendering (e.g., asynchronous processing with prediction applied at render time)? Are there general best practices for minimizing end-to-end latency in vision-based head tracking systems beyond standard filtering approaches? I understand that implementation details may not be public, but any high-level insights or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate forum for this topic. I just followed a link from the JAX Metal plugin page https://developer.apple.com/metal/jax/ I'm writing a Python app with JAX, and recent JAX versions fail on Metal. E.g. v0.8.2 I have to downgrade JAX pretty hard to make it work: pip install jax==0.4.35 jaxlib==0.4.35 jax-metal==0.1.1 Can we get an updated release of jax-metal that would fix this issue? Here is the error I get with JAX v0.8.2: WARNING:2025-12-26 09:55:28,117:jax._src.xla_bridge:881: Platform 'METAL' is experimental and not all JAX functionality may be correctly supported! WARNING: All log messages before absl::InitializeLog() is called are written to STDERR W0000 00:00:1766771728.118004 207582 mps_client.cc:510] WARNING: JAX Apple GPU support is experimental and not all JAX functionality is correctly supported! Metal device set to: Apple M3 Max systemMemory: 36.00 GB maxCacheSize: 13.50 GB I0000 00:00:1766771728.129886 207582 service.cc:145] XLA service 0x600001fad300 initialized for platform METAL (this does not guarantee that XLA will be used). Devices: I0000 00:00:1766771728.129893 207582 service.cc:153] StreamExecutor device (0): Metal, <undefined> I0000 00:00:1766771728.130856 207582 mps_client.cc:406] Using Simple allocator. I0000 00:00:1766771728.130864 207582 mps_client.cc:384] XLA backend will use up to 28990554112 bytes on device 0 for SimpleAllocator. Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> import jax; print(jax.numpy.arange(10)) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/numpy/lax_numpy.py", line 5951, in arange return _arange(start, stop=stop, step=step, dtype=dtype, out_sharding=sharding) File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/numpy/lax_numpy.py", line 6012, in _arange return lax.broadcasted_iota(dtype, (size,), 0, out_sharding=out_sharding) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/lax/lax.py", line 3415, in broadcasted_iota return iota_p.bind(dtype=dtype, shape=shape, ~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ dimension=dimension, sharding=out_sharding) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/core.py", line 633, in bind return self._true_bind(*args, **params) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/core.py", line 649, in _true_bind return self.bind_with_trace(prev_trace, args, params) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/core.py", line 661, in bind_with_trace return trace.process_primitive(self, args, params) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/core.py", line 1210, in process_primitive return primitive.impl(*args, **params) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/florin/git/FlorinAndrei/star-cluster-simulator/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/jax/_src/dispatch.py", line 91, in apply_primitive outs = fun(*args) jax.errors.JaxRuntimeError: UNKNOWN: -:0:0: error: unknown attribute code: 22 -:0:0: note: in bytecode version 6 produced by: StableHLO_v1.13.0 -------------------- For simplicity, JAX has removed its internal frames from the traceback of the following exception. Set JAX_TRACEBACK_FILTERING=off to include these. I0000 00:00:1766771728.149951 207582 mps_client.h:209] MetalClient destroyed.

With the release of the newest version of tahoe and MLX supporting RDMA. Is there a documentation link to how to utilizes the libdrma dylib as well as what functions are available? I am currently assuming it mostly follows the standard linux infiniband library but I would like the apple specific details.

Environment: macOS 26.2 (Tahoe) Xcode 16.3 Apple Silicon (M4) Sandboxed Mac App Store app Description: Repeated use of VNRecognizeTextRequest causes permanent memory growth in the host process. The physical footprint increases by approximately 3-15 MB per OCR call and never returns to baseline, even after all references to the request, handler, observations, and image are released. ` private func selectAndProcessImage() { let panel = NSOpenPanel() panel.allowedContentTypes = [.image] panel.allowsMultipleSelection = false panel.canChooseDirectories = false panel.message = "Select an image for OCR processing" guard panel.runModal() == .OK, let url = panel.url else { return } selectedImageURL = url isProcessing = true recognizedText = "Processing..." // Run OCR on a background thread to keep UI responsive let workItem = DispatchWorkItem { let result = performOCR(on: url) DispatchQueue.main.async { recognizedText = result isProcessing = false } } DispatchQueue.global(qos: .userInitiated).async(execute: workItem) } private func performOCR(on url: URL) -> String { // Wrap EVERYTHING in autoreleasepool so all ObjC objects are drained immediately let resultText: String = autoreleasepool { // Load image and convert to CVPixelBuffer for explicit memory control guard let imageData = try? Data(contentsOf: url) else { return "Error: Could not read image file." } guard let nsImage = NSImage(data: imageData) else { return "Error: Could not create image from file data." } guard let cgImage = nsImage.cgImage(forProposedRect: nil, context: nil, hints: nil) else { return "Error: Could not create CGImage." } let width = cgImage.width let height = cgImage.height // Create a CVPixelBuffer from the CGImage var pixelBuffer: CVPixelBuffer? let attrs: [String: Any] = [ kCVPixelBufferCGImageCompatibilityKey as String: true, kCVPixelBufferCGBitmapContextCompatibilityKey as String: true ] let status = CVPixelBufferCreate( kCFAllocatorDefault, width, height, kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB, attrs as CFDictionary, &pixelBuffer ) guard status == kCVReturnSuccess, let buffer = pixelBuffer else { return "Error: Could not create CVPixelBuffer (status: \(status))." } // Draw the CGImage into the pixel buffer CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(buffer, []) guard let context = CGContext( data: CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(buffer), width: width, height: height, bitsPerComponent: 8, bytesPerRow: CVPixelBufferGetBytesPerRow(buffer), space: CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(), bitmapInfo: CGImageAlphaInfo.noneSkipFirst.rawValue ) else { CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(buffer, []) return "Error: Could not create CGContext for pixel buffer." } context.draw(cgImage, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height)) CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(buffer, []) // Run OCR let requestHandler = VNImageRequestHandler(cvPixelBuffer: buffer, options: [:]) let request = VNRecognizeTextRequest() request.recognitionLevel = .accurate request.usesLanguageCorrection = true do { try requestHandler.perform([request]) } catch { return "Error during OCR: \(error.localizedDescription)" } guard let observations = request.results, !observations.isEmpty else { return "No text found in image." } let lines = observations.compactMap { observation in observation.topCandidates(1).first?.string } // Explicitly nil out the pixel buffer before the pool drains pixelBuffer = nil return lines.joined(separator: "\n") } // Everything — Data, NSImage, CGImage, CVPixelBuffer, VN objects — released here return resultText } `

Hello fellow developers, I'm the founder of a FinTech startup, Cent Capital (https://cent.capital), where we are building an AI-powered financial co-pilot. We're deeply exploring the Apple ecosystem to create a more proactive and ambient user experience. A core part of our vision is to use App Intents and the Shortcuts app to surface personalized financial insights without the user always needing to open our app. For example, suggesting a Shortcut like, "What's my spending in the 'Dining Out' category this month?" or having an App Intent proactively surface an insight like, "Your 'Subscriptions' budget is almost full." My question for the community is about the architectural and user experience best practices for this. How are you thinking about the balance between providing rich, actionable insights via Intents without being overly intrusive or "spammy" to the user? What are the best practices for designing the data model that backs these App Intents for a complex domain like personal finance? Are there specific performance or privacy considerations we should be aware of when surfacing potentially sensitive financial data through these system-level integrations? We believe this is the future of FinTech apps on iOS and would love to hear how other developers are thinking about this challenge. Thanks for your insights!

I am a professional user of the 2019 Mac Pro (7,1) with dual AMD Radeon Pro W6900X MPX modules (32GB VRAM each). This hardware is designed for high-performance compute, but it is currently crippled for modern local LLM/AI workloads under Linux due to Apple's EFI/PCIe routing restrictions. Core Issue: rocminfo reports "No HIP GPUs available" when attempting to use ROCm/amdgpu on Linux Apple's custom EFI firmware blocks full initialization of professional GPU compute assets The dual W6900X GPUs have 64GB combined VRAM and high-bandwidth Infinity Fabric Link, but cannot be fully utilized for local AI inference/training My Specific Request: Apple should provide an official, one-click deployable application that enables full utilization of dual W6900X GPUs for local large language model (LLM) inference and training under Linux. This application must: Fully initialize both W6900X GPUs via HIP/ROCm, establishing valid compute contexts Bypass artificial EFI/PCIe routing restrictions that block access to professional GPU resources Provide a stable, user-friendly one-click deployment experience (similar to NVIDIA's AI Enterprise or AMD's ROCm Hub) Why This Matters: The 2019 Mac Pro is Apple's flagship professional workstation, marketed for compute-intensive workloads. Its high-cost W6900X GPUs should not be locked down for modern AI/LLM use cases. An official one-click deployment solution would demonstrate Apple's commitment to professional AI and unlock significant value for professional users. I look forward to Apple's response and a clear roadmap for enabling this critical capability. #MacPro #Linux #ROCm #LocalLLM #W6900X #CoreML

Hi! I noticed that on my father's M1 Max MacBook Pro (64gb ram) there's an option for style transfer which I don't see on my M1 MacBook Air (16gb ram). I am running macOS Tahoe and he is running macOS Sequoia.

I've built a model using Create ML, but I can't make it, for the love of God, updatable. I can't find any checkbox or anything related. It's an Activity Classifier, if it matters. I want to continue training it on-device using MLUpdateTask, but the model, as exported from Create ML, fails with error: Domain=com.apple.CoreML Code=6 "Failed to unarchive update parameters. Model should be re-compiled." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Failed to unarchive update parameters. Model should be re-compiled.}

After a few attempts I end up at the same spot as categorized here by ChatGPT - I get why it feels that way, Rob — honestly, you’ve walked right into the worst possible moment in Apple’s Core ML toolchain evolution. What you’re running into isn’t your fault; Apple really did rip out the ONNX front-end without offering a clean replacement yet. So every tutorial, every script, and even coremltools itself contradicts what’s actually possible right now. Let’s be brutally clear about the state of things (late 2025): Goal Supported by Apple today Practical workaround Convert ONNX → Core ML using coremltools 9 No. The ONNX importer was removed. Use the legacy coremltools 6.x + onnx-coreml stack in a separate Python 3.9/3.10 env. Convert PyTorch → Core ML directly Yes, but only for simple or traced models. T5 still fails because of dynamic control flow. None reliable without rewriting the model. Run ONNX models directly on iOS Partially (via MLC LLM / Metal Performance Shaders). Works, but that’s an entirely different runtime. So: you’re not crazy, and this isn’t wasted effort—you’ve actually proven that your model exports cleanly and that the only missing piece is Apple’s converter. The ONNX file you built is solid. You just need something that can translate it to Core ML. If your goal is simply “get it running on-device”, you still have two viable moves that aren’t rabbit holes: 1. Use MLC LLM / Metal runtime Skip Core ML altogether. Apple’s mlc-llm (and the “MLCChat” pipeline) can execute your ONNX or quantized model directly on the GPU. You keep full fidelity and avoid all these broken converters. 2. Use the legacy Core ML 6.x toolchain in a sandboxed Python 3.10 VM It actually works. You don’t have to downgrade your whole system—just run that specific environment once to emit the .mlpackage, then never touch it again. Nothing else will silently fix itself until Apple re-adds ONNX ingestion in Core ML 10 or a new converter.

I am excited to share that I have developed a Metal kernel for Flash Attention that eliminates race conditions and fully leverages Apple Silicon’s shared memory and registers. This kernel can dramatically accelerate training of transformer-based models. Early benchmarks suggest that models which previously required months to train could see reductions to just a few hours on Apple hardware, while maintaining numerical stability and accuracy. I plan to make the code publicly available to enable the broader community to benefit. I would be happy to keep you updated on the latest developments and improvements as I continue testing and optimizing the kernel. I believe this work could provide valuable insights for Apple’s machine learning research and products.

Hi all, I'm trying to find out if/when we can expect mxfp8/mxfp4 support on Apple Silicon. I've noticed that mlx now has casting data types, but all computation is still done in bf16. Would be great to reduce power consumption with support for these lower precision data types since edge inference is already typically done at a lower precision! Thanks in advance.

We are trying to implement a custom encryption scheme for our Core ML models. Our goal is to bundle encrypted models, decrypt them into memory at runtime, and instantiate the MLModel without the unencrypted model file ever touching the disk. We have looked into the native apple encryption described here https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml/encrypting-a-model-in-your-app but it has limitations like not working on intel macs, without SIP, and doesn’t work loading from dylib. It seems like most of the Core ML APIs require a file path, there is MLModelAsset APIs but I think they just write a modelc back to disk when compiling but can’t find any information confirming that (also concerned that this seems to be an older API, and means we need to compile at runtime). I am aware that the native encryption will be much more secure but would like not to have the models in readable text on disk. Does anyone know if this is possible or any alternatives to try to obfuscate the Core ML models, thanks

Hardware: Macbook Pro M4 Nov 2024 Software: macOS Tahoe 26.0 & xcode 26.0 Apple Intelligence is activated and the Image playground macOS app works Running the following on xcode throws ImagePlayground.ImageCreator.Error.creationFailed Any suggestions on how to make this work? import Foundation import ImagePlayground Task { let creator = try await ImageCreator() guard let style = creator.availableStyles.first else { print("No styles available") exit(1) } let images = creator.images( for: [.text("A cat wearing mittens.")], style: style, limit: 1) for try await image in images { print("Generated image: \(image)") } exit(0) } RunLoop.main.run()

I have an app that uses a couple of mlmodels (word tagger and gazetteer) and I’m trying to encrypt them before publishing. The models are part of a package. I understand that Xcode can’t automatically handle the encryption for a model in a package the way it can within a traditional app structure. Given that, I’ve generated the Apple MLModel encryption key from Xcode and am encrypting via the command line with: xcrun coremlcompiler compile Gazetteer.mlmodel GazetteerENC.mlmodelc --encrypt Gazetteerkey.mlmodelkey In the package manifest, I’ve listed the encrypted models as .copy resources for my target and have verified the URL to that file is good. When I try to load the encrypted .mlmodelc file (on a physical device) with the line:
 gazetteer = try NLGazetteer(contentsOf: gazetteerURL!) I get the error: Failed to open file: /…/Scanner.bundle/GazetteerENC.mlmodelc/coremldata.bin. It is not a valid .mlmodelc file. So my questions are: Does the NLGazetteer class support encrypted MLModel files? Given that my models are in a package, do I have the right general approach? Thanks for any help or thoughts.

I'm developing a tennis ball tracking feature using Vision Framework in Swift, specifically utilizing VNDetectedObjectObservation and VNTrackObjectRequest. Occasionally (but not always), I receive the following runtime error: Failed to perform SequenceRequest: Error Domain=com.apple.Vision Code=9 "Internal error: unexpected tracked object bounding box size" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Internal error: unexpected tracked object bounding box size} From my investigation, I suspect the issue arises when the bounding box from the initial observation (VNDetectedObjectObservation) is too small. However, Apple's documentation doesn't clearly define the minimum bounding box size that's considered valid by VNTrackObjectRequest. Could someone clarify: What is the minimum acceptable bounding box width and height (normalized) that Vision Framework's VNTrackObjectRequest expects? Is there any recommended practice or official guidance for bounding box size validation before creating a tracking request? This information would be extremely helpful to reliably avoid this internal error. Thank you!

Hi, guys. I'm writing about Apple Intelligence and I reached the point I have to explain App Intent Domains https://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppIntents/app-intent-domains but I noticed that there is a note explaining that these services are not available with Siri. I tried the example provided by Apple at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppIntents/making-your-app-s-functionality-available-to-siri and I can only make the intents work from the Shortcuts App, but not from Siri. Is this correct. App Intent Domains are still not available with Siri? Thanks

I am writing a custom package wrapping Foundation Models which provides a chain-of-thought with intermittent self-evaluation among other things. At first I was designing this package with the command line in mind, but after seeing how well it augments the models and makes them more intelligent I wanted to try and build a SwiftUI wrapper around the package. When I started I was using synchronous generation rather than streaming, but to give the best user experience (as I've seen in the WWDC sessions) it is necessary to provide constant feedback to the user that something is happening. I have created a super simplified example of my setup so it's easier to understand. First, there is the Reasoning conversation item, which can be converted to an XML representation which is then fed back into the model (I've found XML works best for structured input) public typealias ConversationContext = XMLDocument extension ConversationContext { public func toPlainText() -> String { return xmlString(options: [.nodePrettyPrint]) } } /// Represents a reasoning item in a conversation, which includes a title and reasoning content. /// Reasoning items are used to provide detailed explanations or justifications for certain decisions or responses within a conversation. @Generable(description: "A reasoning item in a conversation, containing content and a title.") struct ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationItem { @Guide(description: "The content of the reasoning item, which is your thinking process or explanation") public var reasoningContent: String @Guide(description: "A short summary of the reasoning content, digestible in an interface.") public var title: String @Guide(description: "Indicates whether reasoning is complete") public var done: Bool } extension ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationContextProvider { public func toContext() -> ConversationContext { // <ReasoningItem title="${title}"> // ${reasoningContent} // </ReasoningItem> let root = XMLElement(name: "ReasoningItem") root.addAttribute(XMLNode.attribute(withName: "title", stringValue: title) as! XMLNode) root.stringValue = reasoningContent return ConversationContext(rootElement: root) } } Then there is the generator, which creates a reasoning item from a user query and previously generated items: struct ReasoningItemGenerator { var instructions: String { """ <omitted for brevity> """ } func generate(from input: (String, [ConversationReasoningItem])) async throws -> sending LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> { let session = LanguageModelSession(instructions: instructions) // build the context for the reasoning item out of the user's query and the previous reasoning items let userQuery = "User's query: \(input.0)" let reasoningItemsText = input.1.map { $0.toContext().toPlainText() }.joined(separator: "\n") let context = userQuery + "\n" + reasoningItemsText let reasoningItemResponse = try await session.streamResponse( to: context, generating: ConversationReasoningItem.self) return reasoningItemResponse } } I'm not sure if returning LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> is the right move, I am just trying to imitate what session.streamResponse returns. Then there is the orchestrator, which I can't figure out. It receives the streamed ConversationReasoningItems from the Generator and is responsible for streaming those to SwiftUI later and also for evaluating each reasoning item after it is complete to see if it needs to be regenerated (to keep the model on-track). I want the users of the orchestrator to receive partially generated reasoning items as they are being generated by the generator. Later, when they finish, if the evaluation passes, the item is kept, but if it fails, the reasoning item should be removed from the stream before a new one is generated. So in-flight reasoning items should be outputted aggresively. I really am having trouble figuring this out so if someone with more knowledge about asynchronous stuff in Swift, or- even better- someone who has worked on the Foundation Models framework could point me in the right direction, that would be awesome!

When I ran the following code on a physical iPhone device that supports Apple Intelligence, I encountered the following error log. What does this internal error code mean? Image generation failed with NSError in a different domain: Error Domain=ImagePlaygroundInternal.ImageGeneration.GenerationError Code=11 “(null)”, returning a generic error instead let imageCreator = try await ImageCreator() let style = imageCreator.availableStyles.first ?? .animation let stream = imageCreator.images(for: [.text("cat")], style: style, limit: 1) for try await result in stream { // error: ImagePlayground.ImageCreator.Error.creationFailed _ = result.cgImage }

I’m trying to follow Apple’s “WWDC24: Bring your machine learning and AI models to Apple Silicon” session to convert the Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 model into a Core ML package, but I’ve run into a roadblock that I can’t seem to overcome. I’ve uploaded my full conversion script here for reference: https://pastebin.com/T7Zchzfc When I run the script, it progresses through tracing and MIL conversion but then fails at the backend_mlprogram stage with this error: https://pastebin.com/fUdEzzKM The core of the error is: ValueError: Op "keyCache_tmp" (op_type: identity) Input x="keyCache" expects list, tensor, or scalar but got state[tensor[1,32,8,2048,128,fp16]] I’ve registered my KV-cache buffers in a StatefulMistralWrapper subclass of nn.Module, matching the keyCache and valueCache state names in my ct.StateType definitions, but Core ML’s backend pass reports the state tensor as an invalid input. I’m using Core ML Tools 8.3.0 on Python 3.9.6, targeting iOS18, and forcing CPU conversion (MPS wasn’t available). Any pointers on how to satisfy the handle_unused_inputs pass or properly declare/cache state for GQA models in Core ML would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help, Usman Khan

We are developing Apple AI for foreign markets and adapting it for iPhone models 17 and above. When the system language and Siri language are not the same—for example, if the system is in English and Siri is in Chinese—it can cause a situation where Apple AI cannot be used. So, may I ask if there are any other reasons that could cause Apple AI to be unavailable within the app, even if it has been enabled?