Description Our app, Octory, allows users to create onboarding and communication workflows composed of slides containing various UI components, including embedded video players powered by AVPlayerView. Since macOS 26.4 Beta, the app crashes at launch whenever a workflow contains a video component. Workflows without video components load and render without issue, which points to a regression in AVKit's player control rendering pipeline. As anyone seen similar behaviour when using AVKit or is it something we do not do properly? Expected Behavior The app opens and renders the workflow, including the embedded video component. Actual Behavior The app briefly launches and immediately crashes with SIGABRT on the main thread. Crash Analysis Key takeaways for anyone investigating: Root cause — abort() inside NSImageSymbolConfiguration The crash occurs entirely within Apple frameworks, with no third-party code in the faulting call chain (aside from the app's entry point). The sequence is: AVPlayerItem finishes loading and fires a KVO notification that it is ready to play (_updateCanPlayAndCanStepPropertiesWhenReadyToPlayWithNotificationPayload:) This KVO chain propagates through NSKeyValueDidChange up to AVPlayerView, which calls _updateVideoGravityType AVPlayerControlsViewController responds by calling _updateZoomButtonImage, which asks AVPlayerControlsConfigurator for a configured SF Symbol via +[NSImage(AVAdditions) avkit_imageWithSymbolName:textStyle:scale:accessibilityDescription:] The symbol rendering hits -[NSImageSymbolConfiguration _getEffectivePointSize:glyphWeight:glyphSize:backfilledWithFont:scale:], which calls abort() The entire crash stack is in AppKit (NSImage / NSImageSymbolConfiguration) and AVKit — no application code is involved in the faulting path. The abort() suggests a precondition or assertion failure inside the symbol configuration logic, possibly due to an invalid or nil font/text style being passed during the zoom button image setup. This is triggered automatically the moment an AVPlayerItem becomes ready to play and AVKit attempts to render its transport controls. There is no way for the application to intercept or work around this. Relevant stack frames (Thread 0 — main thread) 3 AppKit -[NSImageSymbolConfiguration _getEffectivePointSize:glyphWeight:glyphSize:backfilledWithFont:scale:] + 440 ← abort() here 4 AppKit -[NSImageSymbolRepProvider _bestRepresentationForImage:hints:] + 404 11 AVKit +[NSImage(AVAdditions) avkit_imageWithSymbolName:textStyle:scale:accessibilityDescription:] + 332 12 AVKit -[AVPlayerControlsConfigurator configuredSymbolForImageName:] + 92 13 AVKit -[AVPlayerControlsViewController _updateZoomButtonImage] + 160 14 AVKit -[AVPlayerControlsViewController setVideoGravityType:] + 52 15 AVKit -[AVPlayerView _updateVideoGravityType] + 1056 28 AVFCore -[AVPlayerItem didChangeValueForKey:] + 56 29 AVFCore -[AVPlayerItem _updateCanPlayAndCanStepPropertiesWhenReadyToPlayWithNotificationPayload:updateStatusToReadyToPlay:] + 660 Additional Notes Removing the video component from the workflow (i.e. not instantiating AVPlayerView) resolves the crash entirely. The crash is 100% reproducible on every launch. This behavior was not present on macOS 26.3 or any prior release. The app was not recompiled — the same binary that works on 26.3 crashes on 26.4 Beta & 26.4. Environment Detail Value OS macOS 26.4 Hardware MacBook Pro M1 (MacBookPro17,1)

The Url that i am using to play content in AVPlayer https://vodc.dp.sooka.my/wmt:eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.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.FSgRrQeFHLhmrBuDFsMKZGFh4eUrCk9PgTxIyFTP8yk/2a2a2d42df9fd90a518309ea15115a76-73a56e66665549280e00-10/2a2a2d42df9fd90a518309ea15115a76-73a56e66665549280e00-10/index.m3u8 I am getting below error : "timestamp":1772385202.085278,"message":"Playback failed. unsupported URL","data":{"message":"unsupported URL","code":-1002,"underlyingError":{"domain":"NSURLErrorDomain","description":"Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1002 \"unsupported URL\" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=unsupported URL, NSUnderlyingError=0x301f08870 {Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=-1002 \"unsupported URL\" Please help me what is the reason of this error

MPVolumeView's showsRouteButton was deprecated (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/mpvolumeview/showsroutebutton?language=objc). It's not clear how can we now hide this button without deprecation warning. The documentation is lacking. Please advise. Thank you!

We have an application that capture audio and video. App captures audio PCM on internal or external microphone and displays audio level on the screen. App was working fine for many years but after iOS 26.4 upgrade, averagePowerLevel and peakHoldLevel are stuck to -120 values. Any suggestion?

We have an VoiP application, our application can be configured to amplify the PCM samples before feeding it to the Player to achieve volume gain at the receiver. In order to support this, We follow as below. If User has configured this Gain Settings within application, Application applies the amplification for the samples to introduce the gain. Application will also set the AVAudioSessionCategory to AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback Provided the User has chosen the output to Speaker. This settings was working for us but we see there is a difference in behaviour w.r.t Volume Level System Settings between OS 26.3.1 and OS 26.4 When user has chosen earpiece as Output, then we will set the AVAudioSessionCategory to AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord. User would have set the volume level to minimum. When user will change the output to Speaker, then we will set the AVAudioSessionCategory to AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback. The expectation is, the volume level should be of AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback what was set earlier instead we are seeing the volume level stays as minimum which was set to AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord Could you please explain about this inconsistency w.r.t Volume level.

Hi, I'm developing a Tauri V2 app on MacOS, and am wanting to implement playback controls. It seems that Apple locks down playback, requiring a signed application. My app also has capabilities to "get currently playing track", and I confirmed this works; Apple produces a popup triggered by my await MusicAuthorization.request() call. It returns nil, of course, because I can't get anything to play via the ApplicationMusicPlayer; only through the system's Apple Music app. I understand SystemMusicPlayer is not available on MacOS, which is fine. I'm just a little confused as it seems pretty standard to need to test playback controls quickly without having to codesign and do some provisionprofile embedding acrobatics each time Rust re-compiles target/debug. This slows down development a lot. I do have these entries in my Entitlements.plist: <key>com.apple.security.personal-information.media-library</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.developer.music-kit</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key> <true/> In my tauri.conf.json, I have: "macOS": { "entitlements": "./Entitlements.plist", "signingIdentity": "Apple Development: ()" } My application works like this: I have a temporary button click to fire off a tauriinvoke() command which goes to a #tauri::command, which bridges to Swift code. Again, I validated that my less-permissive "get currently playing track" works; i.e., does not get permission denied. exact error message: [swift] playMedia error: .permissionDenied (^specifically, ".permissionDenied") My code to trigger playback of a specific media item: Task { print("[swift] entered sema Task") let status: MusicAuthorization.Status = await MusicAuthorization.request() print("auth status: \(status)") guard status == .authorized else { sema.signal(); return } print("passed the status guard.") do { var request = MusicCatalogResourceRequest<Song>(matching: \.id, equalTo: MusicItemID(rawValue: songId)) request.limit = 1 let response = try await request.response() guard let song = response.items.first else { sema.signal(); return } let player = ApplicationMusicPlayer.shared player.queue = [song] try await player.play() success = true } catch { print("[swift] playMedia error: \(error)") } sema.signal()

Hello there, Our application has HLS VOD download option. Users can download VOD which has DRM protection and watch content when device is offline. We use aggregateAssetDownloadTask to download HLS VOD. We want to resume download after Wifi/LTE change but it does not resume. Download is starting from beginning. We use some token algorithms to start download. That's why, our playlist url and chunks urls may change. But playlist and chunk urls' content is unique. If user start to download via Wifi and changed to LTE. Download request responds 403 Forbidden because of some token algorithms after some time func urlSession(_ session: URLSession, task: URLSessionTask, didCompleteWithError error: Error?) AVAssetDownloadDelegate function triggered by system. If we resume it does not resume at this point. It is starting from beginning if we start new download process for same content. Is there any way to resume unfinished HLS Download processes? Thanks

I just submitted FB22318443. In Mac Catalyst apps running on macOS 26.4, if you choose to limit the app's access to specific photos (as opposed to granting full access), the photos do not appear in the app. 💀 This issue does not occur on iPadOS. It is a macOS 26.4 regression. It occurs even with apps built using a previous version of the SDK such as 26.2. A sample of the console logs: [RM]: 4-1-1 failed to decode for asset: 9290CC20-B85D-47B5-BDBE-D330FE61773D, error code: 3303, description: Error Domain=PHPhotosErrorDomain Code=3303 "(null)" Failed to get sandbox extension for url: file:///Users/Jordan/Pictures/Photos%20Library.photoslibrary/resources/derivatives/masters/9/9290CC20-B85D-47B5-BDBE-D330FE61773D_4_5005_c.jpeg, error: Error Domain=com.apple.photos.error Code=44001 "sandbox extension not in the cache after requesting them for path: /Users/Jordan/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/resources/derivatives/masters/9/9290CC20-B85D-47B5-BDBE-D330FE61773D_4_5005_c.jpeg" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=sandbox extension not in the cache after requesting them for path: /Users/Jordan/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/resources/derivatives/masters/9/9290CC20-B85D-47B5-BDBE-D330FE61773D_4_5005_c.jpeg} [RM]: 1-1-1 Image request failed with error: Error Domain=PHPhotosErrorDomain Code=3303 "(null)"

If a Tap or AggregateDevice with the Private property set is created, does it automatically disappear when the process ends? If not, how can I remove the Tap or AggregateDevice before the main process terminates?

Precondition: In system settings, scale the pointer size up to the max. Our SCScreenshotManager code currently works in macOS 15 and earlier to capture the cursor at it's larger size, but broke in one of the minor releases of macOS Tahoe. The error it produces now is "Failed to start stream due to audio/video capture failure". This only seems to happen with the cursor window, not any others. Another way to get the cursor is with https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nscursor/currentsystem, but that is now deprecated, which makes me think the capture of the cursor is being blocked deliberately. We see this as a critical loss of functionality for our apps, and could use guidance on what to use instead.

I'm developing an audio player app that uses AVAudio​File to read PCM data from various formats. I'm experiencing severe performance issues when seeking in FLAC, while other compressed formats (M4A/AAC) work correctly. I don't intend to use them in my app, but I also tested mp3 files just by curiosity and they also have this issue. Environment: macOS 26 (Tahoe) Xcode 26.3 Apple Silicon (M1) The issue: After setting AVAudio​File​.frame​Position to a position mid-file, the subsequent call to AVAudio​File​.read(into​:frame​Count:) blocks for an unreasonable amount of time for FLAC and MP3 files. The delay scales linearly with the seek target, seeking near the beginning is fast, seeking toward the end is proportionally slower, which suggests the decoder is decoding linearly from the beginning of the file rather than using any seek index. (My app deals with “images” of Audio CDs ripped as a single long audio file.) The issue is particularly severe when reading files from an SMB network share (server on Ethernet, client on Wi-Fi with the access point ~2 meters away in line of sight). Quick Benchmark results: I tested with the same 75-minute audio content (16-bit/44.1 kHz stereo, 200,502,708 frames) encoded in five formats, seeking to the midpoint. Over SMB (Local Network, Server on Ethernet, Client on WiFi): Format | Seek + Read Time ----------|------------------ WAV | 0.007 s AIFF | 0.009 s Apple | 0.015 s Lossless | MP3 | 9.2 s FLAC | 30.2 s Locally (MacBook Air M1 SSD) : Format | Seek + Read Time ----------|------------------ WAV | 0.0005 s AIFF | 0.0004 s Apple | 0.0011 s Lossless | MP3 | 0.1958 s FLAC | 0.7528 s WAV, AIFF, and M4A all seek virtually instantly (< 15 ms). MP3 and FLAC exhibit linear-time behavior, with FLAC being the worst affected. Note that M4A (AAC) is also a compressed format that requires decoding after seeking, yet it completes in 15 ms. This rules out any inherent limitation of compressed formats, the MP4 container's packet index (stts/stco) is clearly being used for fast random access. Both MP3 (Xing/LAME TOC) and FLAC (SEEKTABLE metadata block) have their own seek mechanisms that should provide similar performance. Minimal CLI tool to reproduce: import Foundation guard CommandLine.arguments.count > 1 else { print("Usage: FLACSpeed <audio-file-path>") exit(1) } let path = CommandLine.arguments[1] let fileURL = URL(fileURLWithPath: path) do { let file = try AVAudioFile(forReading: fileURL) let format = file.processingFormat let buffer = AVAudioPCMBuffer(pcmFormat: format, frameCapacity: 8192)! let totalFrames = file.length let seekTarget = totalFrames / 2 print("File: \(fileURL.lastPathComponent)") print("Format: \(format)") print("Total frames: \(totalFrames)") print("Seeking to frame: \(seekTarget)") file.framePosition = seekTarget let start = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent() try file.read(into: buffer, frameCount: 8192) let elapsed = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent() - start print("Read after seek took \(elapsed) seconds") } catch { print("Error: \(error.localizedDescription)") exit(1) } Expected behavior: AVAudio​File​.read(into​:frame​Count:) after setting frame​Position should use the available seek mechanisms in FLAC and MP3 files for fast random access, as it already does for M4A (AAC). Even accounting for the fact that seek tables provide approximate (not sample-precise) positioning, the "jump to nearest index point + decode forward" approach should complete in milliseconds, not seconds. Workaround: For FLAC, I've worked around this by using libFLAC directly, which provides instant seeking via FLAC__stream​_decoder​_seek​_absolute(). libFLAC Performance: For comparison, libFLAC's FLAC__stream​_decoder​_seek​_absolute() performs the same seek + read on the same FLAC file in around 0.015, using the FLAC seek table to jump to the nearest preceding seek point, then decoding forward a small number of frames to the exact target sample.

I have an application which records video along with some custom metadata and a chapter track. The resultant video is stored in the Camera Roll. When sharing the video via the Share Sheet or AirDrop, the metadata track is stripped entirely (the chapter markers are preserved) Sharing via AirDrop with the "All Photos Data" option does include the metadata track, as does copying from the device with Image Capture but this is a bad user experience as the user must remember to explicitly select this option, and the filename is lost when sending this way. I have also tried various other approaches (such as encoding my metadata in a subtitle track, which I didn't expect to be stripped as it's an accessibility concern) but it's also removed. Essentially I am looking for a definitive list of things that are not stripped or if there's a way to encode a track in some way to indicate it should be preserved. The metadata is added via AVTimedMetadataGroup containing one AVMutableMetadataItem which has its value as a JSON string. I took a different approach with the Chapter Marker track (mainly because I did it first in a completely different way and didn't rework it when I added the other track). I post-process these after the video is recorded, and add them with addMutableTrack and then addTrackAssociation(to: chapterTrack, type: .chapterList) but I don't think that's the reason the chapter track persists where the custom metadata does not as other tests with video files from other sources containing subtitles etc also had their subtitle data stripped. tl;dr I record videos with metadata that I want to be able to share via Share Sheet and AirDrop, what am I doing wrong?

I’m building a standalone Apple Watch metronome app for running. My goal is for these 3 apps to work at the same time: Runna owns the workout session Spotify plays music my app plays a metronome click in the background So far this is what I've found: Using HKWorkout​Session in my metronome app works well with Spotify, but conflicts with Runna and other workout apps, so I removed that. Using watchOS background audio with longFormAudio allows my app run in the background, and it can coexist with Runna. However, it seems to conflict with Spotify playback, and one app tends to stop the other. Is there any supported watchOS audio/background configuration that allows all 3 at once? More specifically this is what I need: another app owns HKWorkout​Session Spotify keeps playing my app keeps generating metronome clicks in the background Or is this simply not supported by current watchOS session/background rules? My metronome uses AVAudio​Engine / AVAudio​Player​Node with generated click audio. Thank you!

Hi, Our client currently has an FPS deployment certificate generated with SDK version 4 that is still actively used in production. They would like to generate an additional certificate using SDK version 26. Before doing so, they just want to confirm: Will the existing SDK 4 certificate remain unaffected and still visible in the Apple Developer portal? Any considerations they should keep in mind? Thanks!

Hi, Our client currently has an FPS deployment certificate generated with SDK version 4 that is still actively used in production. They would like to generate an additional certificate using SDK version 26. Before doing so, they just want to confirm: Will the existing SDK 4 certificate remain unaffected and still visible in the Apple Developer portal? Any considerations they should keep in mind? Thanks! :)

I'm developing a PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension and finding it difficult to debug because the system controls when the extension launches. Current experience: The extension starts at unpredictable times (anywhere from 1 minute to several hours after photos are added) By the time I attach the debugger, the upload may have already completed or failed Breakpoints in init() or early lifecycle methods are often missed Questions: Is there a way to force-launch the extension during development (similar to how we can manually trigger Background App Refresh in Xcode)? Are there any launch arguments or environment variables that put the extension in a debug/eager mode? I tried taking photos/videos, but this doesn't trigged app extension in all cases. Any tips for improving the debug cycle would be greatly appreciated. Environment: iOS 26, Xcode 18

I'm implementing PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension to back up photos and videos to our cloud storage service. During testing, I observed that iCloud-optimized photos (where the full-resolution original is stored in iCloud, not on device) do not upload. The upload job appears to silently skip these assets. Questions: Is this behavior intentional/documented? I couldn't find explicit mention of this limitation. If the device only has the optimized/thumbnail version locally, does the system: - Automatically download the full-resolution asset from iCloud before uploading? - Skip the asset entirely? - Return an error via PHAssetResourceUploadJobChangeRequest? For a complete backup solution, should we: - Pre-fetch full-resolution assets using PHAssetResourceManager.requestData(for:options:) before creating upload jobs? - Use a hybrid approach (this extension for local assets + separate logic for iCloud-only assets)? Environment: iOS 26, Xcode 18

Problem: When the screen is locked, an incoming call does not initiate the launch of the Flutter application required for audio and video communication through Jitsi Meet. In the unlocked state, the application functions correctly. The current implementation does not have a mechanism for activating the Flutter engine when receiving a call via CallKit while the screen is locked. Although CallKit UI displays the call acceptance interface and the audio session is configured, the Flutter application remains in a suspended state, making it impossible to connect to the media server. Audio session activated using didActivateAudioSession method.

Hi, So I want to use Apple Music API to get the top musics from Apple music. My question would be: Can I place ads between 2 apple music? Use case: User can listen 30 sec previews which I got from the API (link and stuff included of course). Then he/she swipes (like on tiktok) and see a banner or video ad. Then he/she swipe to the next 30 sec preview. (The ad itself is skippable, so it's not necessary to stay just to listen the music) Is this valid, or I shouldn't use ads this way?

I’m implementing a custom playback pipeline using AVSampleBufferAudioRenderer together with AVSampleBufferRenderSynchronizer. hasSufficientMediaDataForReliablePlaybackStart appears to be the intended signal for determining when enough media has been queued to start playback. For local playback, this works well in practice — the property becomes true after a reasonable amount of media is enqueued. However, when the output route is AirPlay, using this property becomes difficult: AirPlay requires significantly more buffered media before the renderer reports sufficient data. The required preroll amount is much larger than for local playback. For short assets, it is possible to enqueue the entire audio track and still never observe hasSufficientMediaDataForReliablePlaybackStart == true. In that situation there is no more media data to enqueue, but the renderer still reports that playback is not ready. Given this behavior, what is the recommended way to determine playback readiness when using AVSampleBufferAudioRenderer with AirPlay?