I'm getting persistent backboardd crashes in the iPadOS 27 simulator when my app and another app (Safari, Photos or Calendar, etc.) has windows visible on the screen at the same time, including slide over, etc.
Steps to reproduce:
- Launch my app in an iPadOS 27 simulator.
- Open Safari or Photos in another window.
- Arrange both app windows so they're visible.
Within a second backboardd crashes with EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT) in a com.apple.coreanimation.display.primary thread.
The simulator log reports…
-[MTLTextureDescriptorInternal validateWithDevice:]: error 'Texture Descriptor Validation MTLTextureDescriptor has invalid pixelFormat (0).'
Xcode subsequently reports connection-interrupted messages and ends the app's debug session with: “Debug session ended with code 9: Terminated due to signal 9.”
This works correctly in iPadOS 26.x simulators and on a physical device running iPadOS 27.
I can reproduce this with both Xcode 27 and 27.1. Resetting the simulator and testing different simulated iPad models does not resolve it.
Is anyone else seeing anything like this?
It's presumably something I'm doing wrong, so I've double checked my UIScene handling and all seems well (it's been in there for a while) so I'm somewhat at a loss as to where to look next.
This is on a Mac Mini M4 Pro running macOS 27.0.1 (26A434).