Core Motion

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Process accelerometer, gyroscope, pedometer, and environment-related events using Core Motion.

Posts under Core Motion tag

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App with shallow depth entitlement not appearing in Auto-Launch > When Submerged
I'm building a freediving app for Apple Watch Ultra using the shallow depth entitlement (com.apple.developer.submerged-shallow-depth-and-pressure). My app uses WKExtendedRuntimeSession with the underwater-depth background mode, and it works correctly — the session starts, Water Lock activates automatically, and Crown hold water ejection ends the session as expected. However, the app does not appear in Settings > General > Auto-Launch > When Submerged on the watch. Other third-party apps (including one that hasn't been updated in ~2 years and presumably only has the shallow entitlement) do appear in this list. My configuration: WKBackgroundModes: ["underwater-depth", "workout-processing"] WKSupportsAutomaticDepthLaunch: true (Boolean, in watch app Info.plist) Entitlement verified in both the signed binary and provisioning profile watchOS 26.3, Apple Watch Ultra 2 Tested with: development build, TestFlight, and direct Xcode deploy. Watch restarted after each. The app does not appear in any case. The documentation at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremotion/accessing-submersion-data states: "Adding the underwater-depth Background Mode capability also adds your app to the list of apps that the system can autolaunch when the wearer submerges the watch." Does auto-depth-launch require the full depth entitlement (com.apple.developer.submerged-depth-and-pressure), or should the shallow entitlement be sufficient? Is there an additional step required for the app to appear in the When Submerged list? Any guidance appreciated.
1
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35
3h
Compensating for IMU (accelerometer) thermal drift - getting device temperature?
I’m running into a hardware reality. MEMS sensor thermal drift. If a user zeroes out the tilt indoors at 20°C and then takes the phone outside in the cold, the accelerometer baseline shifts just enough as the device cools to throw off the readings. I want to apply a simple thermal compensation curve to the CoreMotion data to keep the "zero" perfectly level regardless of the weather. However, ProcessInfo.thermalState only gives broad buckets (nominal, fair, etc.) which doesn't help me calculate a continuous offset for a phone cooling down degree by degree. Is there any public API, or even a proxy metric, that can give me a rough battery or internal temperature integer? I don’t need high resolution decimals. Just a general device temp to offset the hardware drift. Any undocumented tricks or proxy metrics anyone has used to handle this?
1
0
111
3d
Crash when iterating over CMSensorDataList via NSFastEnumeration
When iterating over a CMSensorDataList (which conforms to NSFastEnumeration) returned by CoreMotion's CMSensorRecorder's accelerometerData(from:to:) method, we sometimes see the crash below, with the frame above pointing to the close brace of the for loop iterating over the list. 0 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf01dc CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423316 1 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf036b CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423715 2 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf02cb CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423555 3 CoreMotion 0x000000019fbb8553 CLMotionActivity::isStatic() const + 1751823 It has been incredibly difficult to reproduce. We managed to reproduce a similar crash stack twice in a separate app that misused accelerometerData(from:to:) by providing a from and to Date that were more than 12 hours apart and iterating over the returned data, but it only occurred twice in many hours of testing. We hope to know if this could be a bug in Core Motion or it is definitely in our SDK, or if there is any way to fail gracefully in this scenario.
2
0
129
1w
iPad Compass Calibration Issues: Impact of Magnetic Cover
We have developed an iPad application using the ARCL (AR + CoreLocation) library to render Point of Interest (POI) annotations in both an AR view and a standard MapView. The application performs as expected on standard devices. However, we have some iPad covered with strong magnet. This creates significant magnetic interference, resulting in a 90° to 180° heading offset, rendering the AR POI placement and MapView orientation unusable. Technical Challenges & Constraints: Hardware Lock: The magnetic cover is a mandatory business requirement and cannot be removed during field use. Sensor Failure: The internal magnetometer cannot provide an accurate North reference due to the proximity of the cover’s magnets. While CoreLocation and CoreMotion use sensor fusion, the magnetometer remains the primary source for absolute heading. Alternative Orientation Tracking: Is there a documented method to bypass the magnetometer and derive device orientation using only the Gyroscope and Accelerometer (e.g., relative tracking) while still maintaining alignment with geographic coordinates in CoreLocation? Programmatic Offsets: Are there known APIs or mathematical workarounds to programmatically "nullify" or offset a constant magnetic bias once the device is inside the cover? so we can use that offset for ARView and in Mapview as well.
1
0
239
Jan ’26
Request: Higher-Frequency IMU Access on Apple Watch for Sports Performance Apps
Hi everyone, I’m building a sports performance app for Apple Watch that uses the onboard IMU to analyze swings and impacts in sports like tennis and golf. The goal is to estimate club/racket head speed, ball speed, and shot quality in real time from wrist motion data. With Core Motion, I can currently get deviceMotion updates at ~100 Hz. While this is fine for general movement tracking, the actual ball impact happens much faster — 5–10 ms in tennis and ~0.5 ms in golf. Many of the high-frequency vibration/impact components are missed at 100 Hz, making it hard to directly measure or more accurately estimate certain performance metrics. Questions for Apple / community: 1. Is there a way to access raw accelerometer and gyroscope data at higher sampling rates (e.g., 500–1000 Hz) on Apple Watch? 2. If not, is this due to hardware limitations or an API/software constraint? 3. Are there any research, partner, or beta programs that allow deeper sensor access for sports-science use cases? Even modest increases in IMU sampling could unlock more accurate ball-speed estimates, impact force analysis, and strike-quality detection without needing external sensors — making Apple Watch a best-in-class wearable for precision sports analytics. Happy to share more about the current approach, sample data, and potential use cases if helpful. Thanks, Max
1
0
260
Aug ’25
How can I calculate distance and vertical velocity?
Can't I just add up all of the accelerations of the accelerometer and then use this physics equation to get distance? d = v(i) x t + (1/2) x a x t ^2 In this: v(i) would be 0 t = 1 second a = all accelerometer speeds added together for.1 second t = 1 second Can't I just use this equation to get vertical velocity? A lot of people have said it is impossible but It has been done with variometer apps. I can’t figure out the code. Can anyone guide me in the right direction? v(f) = v(i) + a x t v(i) = 0 a = y-axis acceleration for 1 second t = 1 second Please let me know if this is possible. Thank you so much for your help.
2
0
205
Aug ’25
RealityKit generates an excessive amount of logging
During regular use, RealityKit generates an excessive amount of internal logging that is not actionable by third party developers. When developing an iOS RealityKit/ARKit app, this makes the Xcode console challenging to use for regular work. (FB19173812) See screenshots below. Xcode does have an option for filtering out logging from specific SDKs, but enabling this feature to suppress the logging of RealityKit and related SDKs like PHASE is something developers have to do dozens of times each day. After a year of developing a RealityKit app, this process becomes frustrating. If SDKs like Foundation, UIKit, and SwiftUI generated as much logging as RealityKit and related SDKs, Xcode's console would be unusable. Is there any way to disable the logging of RealityKit and PHASE permanently? Thank you for any help you provide.
1
0
518
Jul ’25
Gyro/Orientation iframe embed doesn't work on iOS26, works on iOS 18.5
So I'm testing a microapp that is contained in an IPFS folder. I use a web3 website that is used to view NFTs and their IPFS files. The app has gyro controls, which are enabled through a confirmation gesture. In iOS 18.5, when I press "Request Permission" button I get the popup to allow the app to acess movement and orientation. In iOS26, pressing the button does nothing. Keep in mind that this only happens through the website, that uses iframes. When I load the IPFS file from a direct link, the popup appears with no issue. I think this might be because iOS26 uses WebGPU or it might be a bug since iOS26 is still in beta.
0
0
283
Jul ’25
Correct JSON format for CoreMotion data for ActivityClassification purposes
I’m developing an activity classifier that I’d like to input using the JSON format of CoreMotion data. I am getting the error: Unable to parse /Users/DewG/Downloads/Testing/Step1/Testing.json. It does not appear to be in JSON record format. A SequenceType of dictionaries is expected I've verified that the format I am using is JSON via various JSON validators, so I am expecting I'm just holding it wrong. Is there an example of a JSON file with CoreMotion data that I can model after?
2
0
257
Jul ’25
iOS magnetometer data processing
Hello, I’m developing an app to detect movement past a strong magnet, targeting both Android and iOS. On Android, I’m using the Sensor API, which provides calibrated readings with temperature compensation, factory (or online) soft-iron calibration, and online hard-iron calibration. The equivalent on iOS appears to be the CMCalibratedMagneticField data from the CoreMotion framework. However, I’m encountering an issue with the iOS implementation. The magnetometer data on iOS behaves erratically compared to Android. While Android produces perfectly symmetric peaks, iOS shows visual peaks that report double the magnetic field strength. Additionally, there’s a "pendulum" effect: the field strength rises, drops rapidly, rises again to form a "double peak" structure, and takes a while to return to the local Earth magnetic field average. The peaks on iOS are also asymmetric. I’m wondering if this could be due to sensor fusion algorithms applied by iOS, which might affect the CMCalibratedMagneticField data. Are there other potential reasons for this behavior? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
0
0
110
Jun ’25
Xcode 16.2 App Crashes Due to Missing NSMotionUsageDescription Key in Info.plist
There is a crash while running the project in Xcode 16.2. The project has been using CMPedometer and CoreMotion since 2020. I wonder: I did not have the NSMotionUsageDescription key added, why is it mandatory to add this key now? “This app has crashed because it attempted to access privacy-sensitive data without a usage description. The app's Info.plist must contain an NSMotionUsageDescription key with a string value explaining to the user how the app uses this data.”
1
1
620
Apr ’25
App with shallow depth entitlement not appearing in Auto-Launch > When Submerged
I'm building a freediving app for Apple Watch Ultra using the shallow depth entitlement (com.apple.developer.submerged-shallow-depth-and-pressure). My app uses WKExtendedRuntimeSession with the underwater-depth background mode, and it works correctly — the session starts, Water Lock activates automatically, and Crown hold water ejection ends the session as expected. However, the app does not appear in Settings > General > Auto-Launch > When Submerged on the watch. Other third-party apps (including one that hasn't been updated in ~2 years and presumably only has the shallow entitlement) do appear in this list. My configuration: WKBackgroundModes: ["underwater-depth", "workout-processing"] WKSupportsAutomaticDepthLaunch: true (Boolean, in watch app Info.plist) Entitlement verified in both the signed binary and provisioning profile watchOS 26.3, Apple Watch Ultra 2 Tested with: development build, TestFlight, and direct Xcode deploy. Watch restarted after each. The app does not appear in any case. The documentation at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremotion/accessing-submersion-data states: "Adding the underwater-depth Background Mode capability also adds your app to the list of apps that the system can autolaunch when the wearer submerges the watch." Does auto-depth-launch require the full depth entitlement (com.apple.developer.submerged-depth-and-pressure), or should the shallow entitlement be sufficient? Is there an additional step required for the app to appear in the When Submerged list? Any guidance appreciated.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
35
Activity
3h
Compensating for IMU (accelerometer) thermal drift - getting device temperature?
I’m running into a hardware reality. MEMS sensor thermal drift. If a user zeroes out the tilt indoors at 20°C and then takes the phone outside in the cold, the accelerometer baseline shifts just enough as the device cools to throw off the readings. I want to apply a simple thermal compensation curve to the CoreMotion data to keep the "zero" perfectly level regardless of the weather. However, ProcessInfo.thermalState only gives broad buckets (nominal, fair, etc.) which doesn't help me calculate a continuous offset for a phone cooling down degree by degree. Is there any public API, or even a proxy metric, that can give me a rough battery or internal temperature integer? I don’t need high resolution decimals. Just a general device temp to offset the hardware drift. Any undocumented tricks or proxy metrics anyone has used to handle this?
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
111
Activity
3d
Crash when iterating over CMSensorDataList via NSFastEnumeration
When iterating over a CMSensorDataList (which conforms to NSFastEnumeration) returned by CoreMotion's CMSensorRecorder's accelerometerData(from:to:) method, we sometimes see the crash below, with the frame above pointing to the close brace of the for loop iterating over the list. 0 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf01dc CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423316 1 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf036b CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423715 2 CoreMotion 0x000000019fcf02cb CLInternalGetPinnedLocationAuthorizationState + 423555 3 CoreMotion 0x000000019fbb8553 CLMotionActivity::isStatic() const + 1751823 It has been incredibly difficult to reproduce. We managed to reproduce a similar crash stack twice in a separate app that misused accelerometerData(from:to:) by providing a from and to Date that were more than 12 hours apart and iterating over the returned data, but it only occurred twice in many hours of testing. We hope to know if this could be a bug in Core Motion or it is definitely in our SDK, or if there is any way to fail gracefully in this scenario.
Replies
2
Boosts
0
Views
129
Activity
1w
Access to raw IMU reading (gyro, acc) from Airpod 3 pro
Hey everyone, I was wondering if it is possible to access the raw data of the gyroscope and accelerometer of the Airpod 3 pro? I found different answers online - some say I can only get some processed data, but in the Core Motion documentation it reads as it might be possible to get raw data. Any clear answer for this one? Thanks!
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
227
Activity
Feb ’26
iPad Compass Calibration Issues: Impact of Magnetic Cover
We have developed an iPad application using the ARCL (AR + CoreLocation) library to render Point of Interest (POI) annotations in both an AR view and a standard MapView. The application performs as expected on standard devices. However, we have some iPad covered with strong magnet. This creates significant magnetic interference, resulting in a 90° to 180° heading offset, rendering the AR POI placement and MapView orientation unusable. Technical Challenges & Constraints: Hardware Lock: The magnetic cover is a mandatory business requirement and cannot be removed during field use. Sensor Failure: The internal magnetometer cannot provide an accurate North reference due to the proximity of the cover’s magnets. While CoreLocation and CoreMotion use sensor fusion, the magnetometer remains the primary source for absolute heading. Alternative Orientation Tracking: Is there a documented method to bypass the magnetometer and derive device orientation using only the Gyroscope and Accelerometer (e.g., relative tracking) while still maintaining alignment with geographic coordinates in CoreLocation? Programmatic Offsets: Are there known APIs or mathematical workarounds to programmatically "nullify" or offset a constant magnetic bias once the device is inside the cover? so we can use that offset for ARView and in Mapview as well.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
239
Activity
Jan ’26
Activity recognition using core motion
as i want to tract activity of iphone user using core motion framework , guide me through .
Replies
2
Boosts
0
Views
2.3k
Activity
Oct ’25
Request: Higher-Frequency IMU Access on Apple Watch for Sports Performance Apps
Hi everyone, I’m building a sports performance app for Apple Watch that uses the onboard IMU to analyze swings and impacts in sports like tennis and golf. The goal is to estimate club/racket head speed, ball speed, and shot quality in real time from wrist motion data. With Core Motion, I can currently get deviceMotion updates at ~100 Hz. While this is fine for general movement tracking, the actual ball impact happens much faster — 5–10 ms in tennis and ~0.5 ms in golf. Many of the high-frequency vibration/impact components are missed at 100 Hz, making it hard to directly measure or more accurately estimate certain performance metrics. Questions for Apple / community: 1. Is there a way to access raw accelerometer and gyroscope data at higher sampling rates (e.g., 500–1000 Hz) on Apple Watch? 2. If not, is this due to hardware limitations or an API/software constraint? 3. Are there any research, partner, or beta programs that allow deeper sensor access for sports-science use cases? Even modest increases in IMU sampling could unlock more accurate ball-speed estimates, impact force analysis, and strike-quality detection without needing external sensors — making Apple Watch a best-in-class wearable for precision sports analytics. Happy to share more about the current approach, sample data, and potential use cases if helpful. Thanks, Max
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
260
Activity
Aug ’25
How can I calculate distance and vertical velocity?
Can't I just add up all of the accelerations of the accelerometer and then use this physics equation to get distance? d = v(i) x t + (1/2) x a x t ^2 In this: v(i) would be 0 t = 1 second a = all accelerometer speeds added together for.1 second t = 1 second Can't I just use this equation to get vertical velocity? A lot of people have said it is impossible but It has been done with variometer apps. I can’t figure out the code. Can anyone guide me in the right direction? v(f) = v(i) + a x t v(i) = 0 a = y-axis acceleration for 1 second t = 1 second Please let me know if this is possible. Thank you so much for your help.
Replies
2
Boosts
0
Views
205
Activity
Aug ’25
RealityKit generates an excessive amount of logging
During regular use, RealityKit generates an excessive amount of internal logging that is not actionable by third party developers. When developing an iOS RealityKit/ARKit app, this makes the Xcode console challenging to use for regular work. (FB19173812) See screenshots below. Xcode does have an option for filtering out logging from specific SDKs, but enabling this feature to suppress the logging of RealityKit and related SDKs like PHASE is something developers have to do dozens of times each day. After a year of developing a RealityKit app, this process becomes frustrating. If SDKs like Foundation, UIKit, and SwiftUI generated as much logging as RealityKit and related SDKs, Xcode's console would be unusable. Is there any way to disable the logging of RealityKit and PHASE permanently? Thank you for any help you provide.
Replies
1
Boosts
0
Views
518
Activity
Jul ’25
Gyro/Orientation iframe embed doesn't work on iOS26, works on iOS 18.5
So I'm testing a microapp that is contained in an IPFS folder. I use a web3 website that is used to view NFTs and their IPFS files. The app has gyro controls, which are enabled through a confirmation gesture. In iOS 18.5, when I press "Request Permission" button I get the popup to allow the app to acess movement and orientation. In iOS26, pressing the button does nothing. Keep in mind that this only happens through the website, that uses iframes. When I load the IPFS file from a direct link, the popup appears with no issue. I think this might be because iOS26 uses WebGPU or it might be a bug since iOS26 is still in beta.
Replies
0
Boosts
0
Views
283
Activity
Jul ’25
Correct JSON format for CoreMotion data for ActivityClassification purposes
I’m developing an activity classifier that I’d like to input using the JSON format of CoreMotion data. I am getting the error: Unable to parse /Users/DewG/Downloads/Testing/Step1/Testing.json. It does not appear to be in JSON record format. A SequenceType of dictionaries is expected I've verified that the format I am using is JSON via various JSON validators, so I am expecting I'm just holding it wrong. Is there an example of a JSON file with CoreMotion data that I can model after?
Replies
2
Boosts
0
Views
257
Activity
Jul ’25
iOS magnetometer data processing
Hello, I’m developing an app to detect movement past a strong magnet, targeting both Android and iOS. On Android, I’m using the Sensor API, which provides calibrated readings with temperature compensation, factory (or online) soft-iron calibration, and online hard-iron calibration. The equivalent on iOS appears to be the CMCalibratedMagneticField data from the CoreMotion framework. However, I’m encountering an issue with the iOS implementation. The magnetometer data on iOS behaves erratically compared to Android. While Android produces perfectly symmetric peaks, iOS shows visual peaks that report double the magnetic field strength. Additionally, there’s a "pendulum" effect: the field strength rises, drops rapidly, rises again to form a "double peak" structure, and takes a while to return to the local Earth magnetic field average. The peaks on iOS are also asymmetric. I’m wondering if this could be due to sensor fusion algorithms applied by iOS, which might affect the CMCalibratedMagneticField data. Are there other potential reasons for this behavior? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Replies
0
Boosts
0
Views
110
Activity
Jun ’25
Xcode 16.2 App Crashes Due to Missing NSMotionUsageDescription Key in Info.plist
There is a crash while running the project in Xcode 16.2. The project has been using CMPedometer and CoreMotion since 2020. I wonder: I did not have the NSMotionUsageDescription key added, why is it mandatory to add this key now? “This app has crashed because it attempted to access privacy-sensitive data without a usage description. The app's Info.plist must contain an NSMotionUsageDescription key with a string value explaining to the user how the app uses this data.”
Replies
1
Boosts
1
Views
620
Activity
Apr ’25