(Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3) At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Camera & Photos. WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025 Introductory kick-off questions Question 1 Tell us a little about the new AVFoundation Capture APIs we've made available in the new iOS 26 developer preview? Cinematic Capture API (strong/weak focus, tracking focus)(scene monitoring)(simulated aperture)(dog/cat heads/groupIDs) Camera Controls and AirPod Stem Clicks Spatial Audio and Studio Quality AirPod Mics in Camera Lens Smudge Detection Exposure and Focus Rect of Interest Question 2 I built QR code scanning into my app, but on newer iPhones I have to hold the phone very far away from the QR code, otherwise the image is blurry and it doesn't scan. Why is this happening and how can I fix it? Every year, the cameras get better and better as we push the state of the art on iPhone photography and videography. This sometimes results in changes to the characteristics of the lenses. min focus distance newer phones have multiple lenses automatic switching behavior Use virtual device like the builtInDualWide or built in Triple, rather than just the builtInWide Set the videoZoomFactor to 2. You're done. Question 3 Last year, we saw some exciting new APIs introduced in AVFoundation in the health space. With Constant Color photography, developers can take pictures that have constant color regardless of ambient lighting. There are some further advancements this year. Davide, could you tell us about them? constant color photography is mean to remove the "tone mapping" applied to photograph captured with camera app, usually incldsuing artistic intent, and instead try to be a close as possible to the real color of the scene, regardless of the illumination constant color images could be captured in HEIF anf JPEG laste year. this year we are adding Support for the DICOM medical imaging photo format. It is a fomrat used by the health industry to store images related to medical subjects like MRI, skin problems, xray and so on. It's writable and also readable format on all OS26, supported through AVCapturePhotoOutput APIs and through the coregraphics api. for coregrapphics there is a new DICOM entry in the property dictionary which includes all the dicom availbale and defined propertie in a file. finder will also display all those in the info panel (Address why a developer would want to use it) - not for regualr picture taking apps. for those HEIF and JPEG are the preferred delivery format. use dicom if your app produces output that are health related, that you can also share with health providers or your doctors Main session developer questions Question 1 LiDAR vs. Dual Camera depth generation: Which resolution does the LiDAR sensor natively have (iPhone 16 Pro) and when to prefer LiDAR over Dual Camera? Both report formats with output resolutions (we don't advertise sensor resolution) Lidar vs Dual, etc: Lidar: Best for absolute depth, real world scale and computer vision Dual, etc: relative, disparity-based, less power, photo effects Also see: 2022 WWDC session "Discovery advancements in iOS camera capture: Depth, focus and multitasking" Question 2 Can true depth and lidar camera run at 60fps? Lidar can do 30fps (edited) Front true depth can do 60fps. Question 3 What’s the first class way to use PhotoKit to reimplement a high performance photo grid? We’ve been using a LazyVGrid and the photos caching manager, but are never able to hit the holy trinity (60hz, efficient memory footprint, minimal flashes of placeholder/empty cells) use the PHCachingImageManager to get media content delivered before you need to display it specify the size you need for grid sized display set the options PHVideoRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat, PHImageRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat and PHImageRequestOptionsResizeModeFast Question 4 For rending live preview of video stream, Is there performance overhead from using async and Swift UI for image updates vs UIViewRepresentable + AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer.self? AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer is the most efficient display path Use VDO + AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer if you need to modify the image data Swift UI image is optimized for static image content Question 5 Is there a way to configure the AVFoundation BuiltInLiDarDepthCamera mode to provide a depth map as accurate as ARKit at close range? The AVCaptureDepthDataOutput supports filtering that reduces noise and fills in invalid values. Consider using this for smoother depth maps Question 6 Pyramid-based photo editing in core image (such as adobe camera raw highlights and shadows)? First off you may want to look a the builtin filter called CIHighlightShadowAdjust Also the noise reduction in the CIRawFilter uses a pyramid-based algorithm. You can also write your own pyramid-based algorithms by taking an input image: down sample it by two multiply times using imageByApplyingAffineTransform apply additional CIKernels to each downsampled image as needed. use a custom CIKernel to combine the results. Question 7 Is the best way to integrate an in-app camera for a “non-camera” app UIImagePickerController? Yes, UIImagePickerController provides system-provided UI for capturing photos and movies. Question 8 Hello, my question is on Deferred Photo Processing? Say I have a photo capture app that adds a CIFilter to the capture. How can I take advantage of Deferred Photo Processing? Since I don’t know how to detect when the deferred captured photo is ready CIFilter can be called on the final at that point Photo will have to be re-inserted into the Photo library as adjustment Question 9 For shipping photo style assets in the app that need transparency what is the best format to use? JPEG2000? will moving to this save a lot of space comapred to PNG or other options? If you want lossless compression PNG is good and supports unpremutiplied alpha If you want lossy compression HEIF supports premutiplied or unpremutiplied alpha (Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3)

(Note: this is part 2 of a 3 part posting. See Part 1 or Part 3) At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Camera & Photos. WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025 Question 10 Can we directly integrate auto-capture triggers (e.g., when image is steady or text is detected) using Vision and AVFoundation? Yes apps can use AVCaptureSession's VDO + AVCapturePhotoOutput, run vision on VDO buffers and capture photo when certain scene or text is detected. Just to be careful to run Vision on VDO buffers async so it doesn't cause frame drops. Question 11 What Camera or Photos framework features support working with images from external media, like connected cameras or SD cards? Any best practices? The ImageCaptureCore framework supports camera devices, memory cards, scanners read and write, where supported check out the docs to see how to browse connected devices, folders, files, etc. Question 12 Hi Brad, to follow up on your SwiftUI cautionary note: using AVCaptureVideoPreview inside a UIViewRepresentable, is okay, right? Thanks all for the great info! Yes, this is totally fine. AppKit or UIKit views inside appropriate SwiftUI representables should be equivalent performance Question 13 What’s the “right” way to transition media in my photos app between HDR modes? When I’m in a one-up view, we use HDR, but in other contexts (like thumbnail) we don’t want HDR. Is there a nice way to tone map? There’s a suite of new System Tone Mapper APIs in this years’ OSes CoreImage ImageKit CoreAnimation, CoreGraphics For example: CoreImage: new CISystemToneMap filter. CoreAnimation: layer.preferredDynamicRange = CADynamicRangeConstrainedHigh Using image views (NSImageView/UIImageView/SwiftUI Image/CALayer) support animations on preferredDynamicRange Can go from high to constrained to standard Tone mapping is provided by the system (CISystemToneMap for controllable example) Question 14 What is your recommendation to preprocess and upscale your depth map in order to render a realistic portrait mode image? One way to do this: the CIEdgePreserveUpsample CIFilter can be use to upsample a lower resolution depth map by using a higher resolution RGB image as a guide. Question 15 For buffering frames for later processing from real-time camera output should we prefer a AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer centered approach or AVCaptureVideoDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate centered approach? When would we use each? AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer and AVCaptureVideoDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate are used hand in hand for custom camera preview. For buffering for later processing, ensure you make copies of VDO buffers to not drop frames from the output Question 16 Hello, my question is on Deferred Photo Processing? Say I have a photo capture app that adds a CIFilter to the capture. How can I take advantage of Deferred Photo Processing? Since I don’t know how to detect when the deferred captured photo is ready CIFilter can be called on the final at that point Photo will have to be re-inserted into the Photo library as adjustment Question 17 Is digital zoom (e.g., 1.5x) before taking a photo the same as cropping the photo afterward? digital zoom upscales the image to output dimensions and cropping will yield a smaller output image while digital zoom will crop, it also upscales Question 18 How do you design camera interfaces that work for both casual users and photography enthusiasts? Progressive disclosure: Put the most common controls up front, and make it easy for pros to drill down. Sensible Defaults: Choose defaults that work well for casual users, but allow those defaults to be modified for photography enthusiasts A good philosophy is: Keep the simple things easy, make the hard things possible Question 19 Recent iPhone models introduced macro mode which automatically switch between lenses to take into account of the focal distance difference. Is there official API to implement this, or should I implement them myself using LiDAR values. Using builtInTripleCamera and builtInDualWideCamera will automatically switch to macro when available Question 20 a couple of years ago at WWDC, the option of replacing a camera with a virtual camera was mentioned. How does one do that - make the “physical” camera effectively disappear, so only the virtual camera is accessible to the user? You can't prevent the built-in camera from being available to the user Question 21 Can developers now integrate custom Core ML models with Vision for on-device photo analysis more seamlessly? Yes they can, use CoreMLRequest , provide their model container Been supported for a while (iOS 18/macOS 15) For more details go to Machine Learning & AI group lab Thursday use smaller images for better performance Question 22 What would you recommend for capture of the new immersive and spatial formats? To capture Spatial Video use AVCaptureMovieFileOutput’s spatialVideoCaptureEnabled property Not all device formats support spatial capture, check AVCaptureDevice.activeFormat.spatialVideoCaptureSupported See WWDC 2024 talk “Build compelling spatial photo and video experiences” for more details Question 23 You mentioned JPEG-XL. What is the current status of support on iOS and macOS for encoding and decoding? For decoding, we support JPEG-XL files in all our OSes, regular SDR files, as well as ISO HDR files. For encoding, we only support JPEG-XL for ProRAW DNG capture in the Camera app or via third-party AVFoundation APIs. If you have any requests for improvement or new features related to JPEG-XL, please file a Feedback request using the Feedback Assistant. (Note: this is part 2 of a 3 part posting. See Part 1 or Part 3)

(Note: this is part 3 of a 3 part posting. See Part 1 or Part 2) At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Camera & Photos. WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025 Question 24 What’s the best approach for optimizing barcode scanning using AVFoundation or Vision in low-light or angled scenarios Turn on flash in low-light scenarios Lower framerate to improve exposure and reduce noise Wait until the capture is in focus/notify your user that they need to get closer Question 25 Recent iPhone models introduced macro mode which automatically switch between lenses to take into account of the focal distance difference. Is there official API to implement this, or should I implement them myself using LiDAR values. Using builtInTripleCamera and builtInDualWideCamera will automatically switch to macro when available Question 26 Is there a way to quickly create a thumbnail after the user selects an image with PhotosPicker? File provider API Additional questions from the WWDC25 in-person labs that occurred later in the WWDC week Question 1 When should I build my custom photo picker instead of using the system one? Always start with the system picker -> try embeddable customization APIs -> fallback to custom picker for very special needs Question 2 I'm building a new camera app for pros and I want to give my users the most un-processed image possible, and the most control over the capture as possible. How can I do that with AVCapture? If stills, Brief Bayer RAW capture overview, or Pro RAW if you want Apple's processing and dynamic range If video, talk about prores LOG. Custom exposure settings are available throguh the apis maybe global/local tonemapping discussion?

I’m writing to report a serious usability regression in the iOS 26 Photos app. Folders can still be created and albums can still be assigned to them, but folders can no longer be opened to view the albums they contain. A container that cannot be opened is not a container, and this breaks a fundamental information architecture model that has existed in Photos for well over a decade. This change disproportionately harms users who maintain large, intentional photo libraries—travel archives, projects, professional work, or long-term personal documentation—where hierarchy and ordering are essential. Search and automated surfacing are not substitutes for deliberate structure. Removing the ability to browse folder → album hierarchy on iOS strips users of control while still exposing the UI for folder creation, which is internally inconsistent. If this behavior is intentional, it should be clearly documented and the folder UI removed to avoid misleading users. If it is not intentional, it needs urgent correction. At minimum, iOS should retain parity with macOS Photos for basic navigation of folders and albums. This is not a niche request; it is a regression in core functionality.

I'm adopting Liquid Glass in iOS 26, when I try to test VNDocumentCameraViewController with document scanning after Liquid Glass enabled, there's a crash just after a photo is taken in VNDocumentCameraViewController, here's the screenshot when it crashed The exception output in XCode console is this: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Layout requested for visible navigation bar, <UINavigationBar: 0x1240bde00; frame = (0 117; 390 54); opaque = NO; tintColor = UIExtendedSRGBColorSpace 1 1 0 1; layer = <CALayer: 0x120c21e60>> standardAppearance=0x12407b900 scrollEdgeAppearance=0x12407bb80 compactAppearance=0x12407b880 no-scroll-edge-support, when the top item belongs to a different navigation bar. topItem = <UINavigationItem: 0x1240bd800> style=navigator leftBarButtonItems=0x123d4e5f0 rightBarButtonItems=0x123d4d5a0, navigation bar = <UINavigationBar: 0x107b9ad00; frame = (0 47; 390 54); opaque = NO; autoresize = W; tintColor = UIExtendedSRGBColorSpace 1 1 0 1; layer = <CALayer: 0x120c20150>> delegate=0x10a805200 standardAppearance=0x107b2c300 scrollEdgeAppearance=0x107b2c280 compactAppearance=0x107b2c100, possibly from a client attempt to nest wrapped navigation controllers.' *** First throw call stack: (0x18e1db994 0x18b0f5814 0x18c092aa0 0x193b18660 0x193a7d540 0x193a7e020 0x1953ec4a0 0x1943b7d78 0x18ed83420 0x18ed82f74 0x18eb83134 0x18eb44c10 0x18eb70bc4 0x18eb7e74c 0x193ac8cd0 0x193ac8c04 0x193ad6afc 0x193ad5f8c 0x27b456560 0x18e12c4cc 0x18e15c0b0 0x18e15bfd8 0x18e133c1c 0x18e132a6c 0x22ed54498 0x193af6ba4 0x193a9fa78 0x193bcb68c 0x102cc2718 0x102cc2688 0x102cc2794 0x18b14ae28) libc++abi: terminating due to uncaught exception of type NSException

Hi everyone, I’m seeing recurring internal AVFoundation camera logs on iOS 26.2 and I’m trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or a regression in the capture pipeline. These logs appear shortly after starting an AVCaptureSession, while video frames are being delivered, and also when the camera is stopped or the capture session is torn down. <<<< FigXPCUtilities >>>> signalled err=-17281 at <>:302 <<<< FigCaptureSourceRemote >>>> Fig assert: "err == 0 " at bail (FigCaptureSourceRemote.m:569) - (err=-17281) Even in this clean, minimal setup, the same logs appear on iOS 26.2 The exact same logic did not produce these logs on iOS 18.x. To rule out issues caused by my own code, GPT created a minimal SwiftUI example from scratch. My primary interest is to perform real-time processing on the video frames delivered by the camera (via AVCaptureVideoDataOutput), for tasks such as analysis, computer vision, or custom frame handling, while simultaneously displaying the live preview. Thanks in advance for any insight. Example Code

I am developing an iOS camera app that can record video directly to external storage connected to an iPhone. To detect whether an external USB storage device is connected and to obtain its URL, I am considering using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession. However, when checking support using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.isSupported, I observe that it returns true only on Pro model iPhones, and false on non-Pro models in my environment. I have reviewed Apple’s official documentation, but I could not find any clear description of the supported devices or requirements (for example, whether this API is limited to Pro models or requires specific hardware capabilities). I would appreciate any information regarding the following points: ①The actual requirements for AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession to be supported Device limitations (Pro vs non-Pro models) Hardware requirements (USB controller, external recording capability, etc.) iOS version dependencies ②Whether support for non-Pro models is planned in the future Tested environments iPhone 16 Pro (iOS 18.7.1) → isSupported == true iPhone 16e (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false iPhone 17 (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false iPhone Air (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false If anyone has observed similar behavior or has official information from Apple regarding this API, I would greatly appreciate your insights.

I am developing an iOS camera app that can record video directly to external storage connected to an iPhone. To detect whether an external USB storage device is connected and to obtain its URL, I am considering using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession. However, when checking support using AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession.isSupported, I observe that it returns true only on Pro model iPhones, and false on non-Pro models in my environment. I have reviewed Apple’s official documentation, but I could not find any clear description of the supported devices or requirements (for example, whether this API is limited to Pro models or requires specific hardware capabilities). I would appreciate any information regarding the following points: ●The actual requirements for AVExternalStorageDeviceDiscoverySession to be supported Device limitations (Pro vs non-Pro models) Hardware requirements (USB controller, external recording capability, etc.) iOS version dependencies ●Whether support for non-Pro models is planned in the future Tested environments iPhone 16 Pro (iOS 18.7.1) → isSupported == true iPhone 16e (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false iPhone 17 (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false iPhone Air (iOS 26.2) → isSupported == false If anyone has observed similar behavior or has official information from Apple regarding this API, I would greatly appreciate your insights.

Hello, We are trying to use the new Background Upload Extension to improve uploads of assets (Photos, Live Photos, Videos) in the background in our application. 1-The assets have finished uploading, but I'm unable to retrieve successful records using PHAssetResourceUploadJob.fetchJobs(action: .acknowledge, options: nil). When will the successful records be returned? 2-How to retrieve the system's pending tasks? We want to cancel tasks handed over to the system when returning to the main app to avoid duplicate resource uploads. 3-When we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = true, will tasks handed over to the system still execute after returning to the main app? Do we need to set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false upon returning to the main app? If we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false, will previously submitted upload tasks be cleared?

Hello, We are trying to use the new Background Upload Extension to improve uploads of assets (Photos, Live Photos, Videos) in the background in our application. 1-The assets have finished uploading, but I'm unable to retrieve successful records using PHAssetResourceUploadJob.fetchJobs(action: .acknowledge, options: nil). When will the successful records be returned? 2-How to retrieve the system's pending tasks ? We want to cancel tasks handed over to the system when returning to the main app to avoid duplicate resource uploads. 3-When we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = true, will tasks handed over to the system still execute after returning to the main app? Do we need to set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false upon returning to the main app? If we set UploadJobExtensionEnabled = false, will previously submitted upload tasks be cleared?

Hi Apple Developer Forums, I’m developing an iOS camera app that processes RAW captures using Core Image. I’m seeing a large “first use” performance penalty specifically when creating the CIImage from CIRAWFilter.outputImage. What’s slow (important detail) I’m measuring the time for: let rawFilter = CIRAWFilter(imageData: rawData, identifierHint: hint) let ciImage = rawFilter.outputImage This is not CIContext.render(...) / createCGImage(...). It’s just the time to access outputImage (i.e., building the Core Image graph / RAW pipeline setup). Observed behavior First time accessing CIRAWFilter.outputImage: ~3 seconds Second time (same app session, similar RAW): ~3 milliseconds So something heavy is happening only on first use (decoder initialization, pipeline setup, shader/library compilation, caching, etc.). Using Metal System Trace, I also noticed that during the slow first call there are many “Create MTLLibrary” events, while the second call doesn’t show this pattern. Warm-up attempts using bundled DNG I tried to “warm up” early (e.g., on camera screen entry) by loading a bundled DNG and then accessing CIRAWFilter.outputImage by taking a photo: Warm-up with a ~247 KB DNG → first real RAW outputImage cost drops to ~1.42s Warm-up with a ~25 MB DNG → first real RAW outputImage cost drops to ~843ms This helps, but it’s still far from the steady-state ~3ms. Warm-up by capturing a real RAW (works, but concerns) The only method that fully eliminates the delay is to trigger a real RAW capture programmatically before the user’s first photo, then use that captured rawData to warm up the CIRAWFilter.outputImage path. This brings the first user-facing capture close to the steady-state timing. However: In some regions, the camera shutter sound cannot be suppressed, so “hidden warm-up capture” is unacceptable UX. I’m also unsure whether triggering a real capture without an explicit user action could raise compliance/privacy concerns, even if the image is immediately discarded and never saved/uploaded. Questions Is the large first-time cost of CIRAWFilter.outputImage expected (RAW pipeline initialization / shader compilation)? Is there an Apple-recommended way to pre-initialize the Core Image RAW pipeline / Metal resources so the first outputImage is fast, without taking a real photo? Are there any best practices (e.g. CIContext creation timing, prepareRender(...), specific options) that reliably reduce this first-use overhead for CIRAWFilter? Attachments Figure 1: First RAW capture with no warm-up (~3s outputImage time) Figure 2: First RAW capture after warm-up with bundled DNG (improved but still hundreds of ms) Thanks for any guidance or experience sharing!

I am new to Swift and iOS development, and I have a question about video capture performance. Is it possible to capture video at a resolution of 4032×3024 while simultaneously running a vision/ML model on the video stream (e.g., using Vision or CoreML)? I want to know: whether iOS devices support capturing video at that resolution, whether the frame rate drops significantly at that scale, and whether it is practical to run a Vision/ML model in real-time while recording at such a high resolution. If anyone has experience with high-resolution AVCaptureSession setups or combining them with real-time ML processing, I would really appreciate guidance or sample code.

PHPhotoLibrary.authorizationStatus(for: .readWrite) == .authorized Iinfo.plist Privacy - Photo Library Usage Description set I check authorization before attempting to get the photoPickerItem.itemIdentifier, but every time the return value from itemIdentifier is nil. Seems I missing some permissions, but unsure why the system is still keeping _shouldExposeItemIdentifier set to false.

Hey, There seems to be an inconsistency when capturing a photo using QualityPrioritization.Quality on the iPhone 17 Pro Main wide Lens. If you zoom above "2x" the output image always has "-2.0ev" bias in the meta data and looks underexposued. This does not happen at zoom levels above 2, or if you set the QualityPrioritization to .Balanced. See below: with .Quality with .Balanced This does not happen on the other lenses. I'm using a simple set up and it is consistent across JPEG and ProRAW capture. I have a demo project if that is useful. Thanks, Alex

I'm using this library: https://github.com/Yummypets/YPImagePicker to capture photos. I've modified it slightly, and I'm using an older version. When testing on my iPhone 16e, ios 26, whenever I take a photo, I get the following two error messages: <<<< FigXPCUtilities >>>> signalled err=-17281 at <>:302 <<<< FigCaptureSourceRemote >>>> Fig assert: "err == 0 " at bail (FigCaptureSourceRemote.m:569) - (err=-17281) These error messages appear, but as far as I can tell, the photo comes through OK, and I can save the data no problem. I've even removed all my handling code to see if it was something I was doing. I don't really want to ship with these errors showing, but I also have no idea what can be causing this error to appear. chatgpt was not helpful diagnosing this. Does anyone know what can cause this error Is there a way I can see the source code to figure out if there's something I'm doing wrong here? It really seems like this is an internal apple error, or else I would have expected more details on the error relating to the code I've written. Any clues would be appreciated!

Device: iPhone 17 Pro iOS Version: iOS 26.1 Camera: Ultra-wide (0.5x) using AVCaptureSession Our camera app freezes on iPhone 17 when switching frame rates (30fps ↔ 60fps). This works fine on iPhone 16 Pro and earlier. What We've Observed: Freeze happens on frame rate change - particularly when stabilization was enabled Thread.sleep is used - to allow camera hardware to settle before re-enabling stabilization Works on older iPhones - only iPhone 17 exhibits this behavior Console shows these errors before freeze: 17281 <<<< FigXPCUtilities >>>> signalled err=18446744073709534335 <<<< FigCaptureSourceRemote >>>> err=-17281 Is Thread.sleep on the main thread causing the freeze? Should all camera configuration be on a background queue? Is there something specific about iPhone 17 ultra-wide camera that requires different handling? Should we use session.beginConfiguration() / session.commitConfiguration() instead of direct device configuration? Is calling setFrameRate from a property's didSet (which runs synchronously) problematic? Are the FigCaptureSourceRemote errors (-17281) indicative of the problem, and what do they mean?

I'm trying to benchmark a Core Image filter chains memory footprint and notice a weird quirk in instruments. On a real device, even with a simple Core Image chain, the memory balloons each time I ran the filter. See attached screen shots. Running on iPhone 17 Pro: Running on simulator (M2 Macbook Pro) As you can see there's a huge build up of 4MB "VM: IOSurface" memory on the real device, but the simulator seems to clean it up correctly. Here's my basic code: func processImage() { guard let inputImage = ContentViewModel.loadImageFromBundle(name: "kitty.HEIC") else { print("Failed to load sample_image from bundle") return } var outputImage = inputImage outputImage = outputImage.applyingFilter("CIBloom", parameters: [ kCIInputRadiusKey: 20, kCIInputIntensityKey: 0.8 ]) DispatchQueue.global(qos: .userInitiated).async { let data = self.context.jpegRepresentation(of: outputImage, colorSpace: CGColorSpace(name: CGColorSpace.sRGB)!) if let data = data, let uiImage = UIImage(data: data) { DispatchQueue.main.async { self.displayImage = Image(uiImage: uiImage) } } } } Why is this happening? Seems like a bug to me or I need to release an object. At the very least makes it challenging to measure memory usage. Any help is greatly appreciated. Alex

Hi, I’m trying to implement the new PhotoKit PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension. I created the extension, enabled full photo library access in the host app, and registered the extension point using the string: com.apple.photos.background-upload. However, when I attempted to enable the extension with: try library.setUploadJobExtensionEnabled(true) I received the following error: Error Domain=PHPhotosErrorDomain Code=-1 "(null)" This happens when running the app on Xcode 26.1 and 26.2 Beta, using the iPhone 17 Pro Max simulator (iOS 26.1 and 26.2). My question is: Is this extension supported on the simulator? I’m asking because at the moment it’s difficult for me to test this on a physical device. Also, What's the meaning of the error? Thanks.

Recently Apple gave us the possibility to upload asset resources in the background. We implemented our background upload extension but when our CI tried to upload the app on TestFlight we got an error that the extension point identifier - in our case com.apple.photos.backgound-upload - is not an official one. Any idea when it will become official and we will be able to release a working background uploading?

Apple Watch app closes when changing photo permissions in the iPhone app. App A is installed simultaneously on both the paired iPhone and Apple Watch. I'm running App A on both my iPhone and Apple Watch. When I change the photo permissions on App A installed on my iPhone, App A running on my Apple Watch automatically closes. At first, I assumed App A on my iPhone was abnormally closing, causing App A on my Apple Watch to also close. However, I've determined that changing the photo permissions is the cause of the app closing. I don't think this behavior existed before WatchOS/iOS 26. Is this behavior a natural addition to WatchOS/iOS 26? If I go to the home screen while running app A on my iPhone and change its photo permissions in the Settings app, app A running on my Apple Watch automatically closes.

The introduction of PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension is a welcome addition in iOS 26.1. I wonder however, how to attach a debugger and actually get the system to call the process() method of the extension. I tried to run the extension both inside photos app (and also the main app for testing), but when I take a photo or add photos to the library (saving), the process() method does never get called. Any hints would be appreciated to debug the PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension during development.

1.May I ask if the Background Upload can run normally in the Release version of ios 26.1? I used the Release version of ios 26.1 for debugging and found that the background upload couldn't be triggered for a long time. I debugged in ios 26.2 and found that background upload could be triggered normally, but kept triggering an Error: "Error returned from daemon: error Domain=com.apple.accounts Code=7 "(null)"

we are working on HDR images and found this problem, asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.photoHDR) always return false func picker(_ picker: PHPickerViewController, didFinishPicking results: [PHPickerResult]) { guard !results.isEmpty else {return} let fetchResult = PHAsset.fetchAssets(withLocalIdentifiers: results.map({$0.assetIdentifier!}), options: nil) var selectedAssets:[PHAsset] = [] fetchResult.enumerateObjects { asset, _, _ in selectedAssets.append(asset) } for i in selectedAssets.enumerated() { let asset:PHAsset = i.element print("\(i.offset): ") print(PHAssetMediaSubtype.photoHDR.rawValue) print(asset.mediaSubtypes) print("photoHDR \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.photoHDR.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.photoHDR))") print("photoLive \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.photoLive.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.photoLive))") print("photoPanorama \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.photoPanorama.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.photoPanorama))") print("photoScreenshot \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.photoScreenshot.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.photoScreenshot))") print("videoHighFrameRate \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.videoHighFrameRate.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.videoHighFrameRate))") print("videoScreenRecording \(PHAssetMediaSubtype.videoScreenRecording.rawValue): \(asset.mediaSubtypes.contains(.videoScreenRecording))") } }