I have a Core Image filter in my app that uses Metal. I cannot compile it because it complains that the executable tool metal is not available, but I have installed it in Xcode. If I go to the "Components" section of Xcode Settings, it shows it as downloaded. And if I run the suggested command, it also shows it as installed. Any advice? Xcode Version Version 26.0 beta (17A5241e) Build Output Showing All Errors Only Build target Lessons of project StudyJapanese with configuration Light RuleScriptExecution /Users/chris/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/StudyJapanese-glbneyedpsgxhscqueifpekwaofk/Build/Intermediates.noindex/StudyJapanese.build/Light-iphonesimulator/Lessons.build/DerivedSources/OtsuThresholdKernel.ci.air /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/Shared/iOS/CoreImage/OtsuThresholdKernel.ci.metal normal undefined_arch (in target 'Lessons' from project 'StudyJapanese') cd /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/StudyJapanese /bin/sh -c xcrun\ metal\ -w\ -c\ -fcikernel\ \"\$\{INPUT_FILE_PATH\}\"\ -o\ \"\$\{SCRIPT_OUTPUT_FILE_0\}\"' ' error: error: cannot execute tool 'metal' due to missing Metal Toolchain; use: xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain /Users/chris/Code/SerpentiSei/StudyJapanese/error:1:1: cannot execute tool 'metal' due to missing Metal Toolchain; use: xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain Build failed 6/9/25, 8:31 PM 27.1 seconds Result of xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain (after switching Xcode-beta.app with xcode-select) xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain Beginning asset download... Downloaded asset to: /System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_MetalToolchain/4d77809b60771042e514cfcf39662c6d1c195f7d.asset/AssetData/Restore/022-19457-035.dmg Done downloading: Metal Toolchain (17A5241c). Screenshots from Xcode Result of "Copy Information" Metal Toolchain 26.0 [com.apple.MobileAsset.MetalToolchain: 17.0 (17A5241c)] (Installed)

Hi, developers, I maintain a shipped app that uses string concatenation to construct Metal shader and compile on-device. Beta 4 seems disabled __asm keyword, resulting the compilation failure. The error is: v2/GEMMKernel.cpp:229: error: program_source:23:9: error: illegal string literal in 'asm' __asm("air.simdgroup_async_copy_1d.p3i8.p1i8"); The relevant code is available at https://github.com/liuliu/ccv/blob/unstable/lib/nnc/mfa/v2/GEMMHeaders.cpp#L30 although any __asm will trip this. Please give us guidance on whether this is a regression or this will be something enforced in 26 release. Personally, I would consider this as a bug given it won't impact anything "compiled" shaders. Thanks for your patience reading this!

I have a very basic usdz file from this repo I call loadTextures() after loading the usdz via MDLAsset. Inspecting the MDLTexture object I can tell it is assigning a colorspace of linear rgb instead of srgb although the image file in the usdz is srgb. This causes the textures to ultimately render as over saturated. In the code I later convert the MDLTexture to MTLTexture via MTKTextureLoader but if I set the srgb option it seems to ignore it. This significantly impacts the usefulness of Model I/O if it can't load a simple usdz texture correctly. Am I missing something? Thanks!

So I've been trying out GPTK with Elite Dangerous Horizons game and it looks like from what I can tell. The VRAM keeps going up until it goes over the limit where it drops the FPS to 1-3 FPS and then crashes the game. From the Performance HUD I can see that it looks like when using GPTK, the VRAM usage just keeps climbing and I never saw it drop down at all. I did some limited testing, and from that I think I can conclude that it is probably not a VRAM leak, but it might be caching it. The reason for this is because I noticed that if I went back to the area that I've been before. It won't increase the VRAM usage. So either there is something wrong with the freeing VRAM memory part, or it could be that GPTK might not be reporting the right amount of VRAM available to use? So maybe that's why it keeps allocating VRAM until it went out of memory and crashed the game. Just to test, I did try running the game with DXVK+MoltenVK combo, and I can see that it works just fine. VRAM is being freed up when it's no longer used. Is this a known issue in some games?

Hi, when I run my app, in console say: NSBundle file:///System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MetalTools.framework/ principal class is nil because all fallbacks have failed

Ever since the release of iOS18, we've been seeing a new crash related to calling jpegData(compressionQuality:). From reports, this isn't crashing during foreground usage of the app, but instead will prompt the user about a background app crash upon foregrounding. The stacks from crash reports show this crash is happening from a variety of callers, but all go through jpegData(compressionQuality:), down through [HDRImageConverter_Metal init] and end up in apthread_mutex_local call when it crashes. Attached is a sample crash report from 18.2(22C5125e), but we've been seeing this since the first iOS18 release. Did something change with around these calls in iOS18 that prohibits their use in the background? crash.txt

Hello, This exact question was already asked in this forum (8 years ago) but I can't find a definitive answer: Does Metal allow using the same color texture as both an input and output (color attachment) of a fragment shader? Is the behavior defined somewhere? I believe this results in undefined behavior under both DirectX and OpenGL, so I'd assume the same for Metal, but then why doesn't Metal warn me about this as it does on some many other "misconfigurations"? It also seems to work correctly in my case, as I found out by accident. Would love to get a clarification! Thanks ahead!

It’s great that we’ll be able to use Metal custom renderers in passthrough mode on visionOS. https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10092 This is a lot of complicated set-up, however. It’s also unclear how occlusion and custom algorithms / raytracing will work in tandem with scene understanding. May we have a project template and/or sample? Preferably with the C api and not just swift. This would be much-appreciated and helpful to everyone who wants this set-up. I’d like to see the whole process. Thank you for introducing this feature!

The title is self-exploratory. I wasn't able to find the CAMetalDisplayLink on the most recent metal-cpp release (metal-cpp_macOS15_iOS18-beta). Are there any plans to include it in the next release?

I use xcode16 and swiftUI for programming on a macos15 system. There is a problem. When I render a picture through mtkview, it is normal when displayed on a regular view. However, when the view is displayed through the .sheet method, the image cannot be displayed. There is no error message from xcode. import Foundation import MetalKit import SwiftUI struct CIImageDisplayView: NSViewRepresentable { typealias NSViewType = MTKView var ciImage: CIImage init(ciImage: CIImage) { self.ciImage = ciImage } func makeNSView(context: Context) -> MTKView { let view = MTKView() view.delegate = context.coordinator view.preferredFramesPerSecond = 60 view.enableSetNeedsDisplay = true view.isPaused = true view.framebufferOnly = false if let defaultDevice = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() { view.device = defaultDevice } view.delegate = context.coordinator return view } func updateNSView(_ nsView: MTKView, context: Context) { } func makeCoordinator() -> RawDisplayRender { RawDisplayRender(ciImage: self.ciImage) } class RawDisplayRender: NSObject, MTKViewDelegate { // MARK: Metal resources var device: MTLDevice! var commandQueue: MTLCommandQueue! // MARK: Core Image resources var context: CIContext! var ciImage: CIImage init(ciImage: CIImage) { self.ciImage = ciImage self.device = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() self.commandQueue = self.device.makeCommandQueue() self.context = CIContext(mtlDevice: self.device) } func mtkView(_ view: MTKView, drawableSizeWillChange size: CGSize) {} func draw(in view: MTKView) { guard let currentDrawable = view.currentDrawable, let commandBuffer = commandQueue.makeCommandBuffer() else { return } let dSize = view.drawableSize let drawImage = self.ciImage let destination = CIRenderDestination(width: Int(dSize.width), height: Int(dSize.height), pixelFormat: view.colorPixelFormat, commandBuffer: commandBuffer, mtlTextureProvider: { () -> MTLTexture in return currentDrawable.texture }) _ = try? self.context.startTask(toClear: destination) _ = try? self.context.startTask(toRender: drawImage, from: drawImage.extent, to: destination, at: CGPoint(x: (dSize.width - drawImage.extent.width) / 2, y: 0)) commandBuffer.present(currentDrawable) commandBuffer.commit() } } } struct ShowCIImageView: View { let cii = CIImage.init(contentsOf: Bundle.main.url(forResource: "9-10", withExtension: "jpg")!)! var body: some View { CIImageDisplayView.init(ciImage: cii).frame(width: 500, height: 500).background(.red) } } struct ContentView: View { @State var showImage = false var body: some View { VStack { Image(systemName: "globe") .imageScale(.large) .foregroundStyle(.tint) Text("Hello, world!") ShowCIImageView() Button { showImage = true } label: { Text("showImage") } } .frame(width: 800, height: 800) .padding() .sheet(isPresented: $showImage) { ShowCIImageView() } } }

When generating large arrays of random numbers, NaNs show up. They also show up at the same indices when using the same seed, leading me to believe that this is a bug with MPSMatrixRandom's normally distributed Float32 random number distribution. Happens with both Philox and MTGP32. Is this intentional and how do I work around this? See the original post for a MWE in Swift and Julia: https://github.com/JuliaGPU/Metal.jl/issues/474

I'm trying to use MTLBinaryArchive. I collected a BinaryArchive from one device and used metal-tt to translate it for all supported iPhone devices, ranging from iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone 16. However, this BinaryArchive is quite large, around 1.5GB uncompressed, and about 500MB compressed in the IPA. I'm wondering how to address the size issue. I watched the WWDC 2022 video, which mentioned that the operating system or app installation process would handle compatibility. Does this compatibility support different GPU chips? I tried installing an IPA with a BinaryArchive collected only from an iPhone 12 on an iPhone 13, but the BinaryArchive didn't take effect. I also saw that Apple supports App Thinning. However, it seems that resources in the Asset Catalog cannot be accessed via URL, and creating an MTLBinaryArchive requires a URL. Is it possible for MTLBinaryArchive to be distributed through App Thinning? The WWDC 2022 video also mentioned using the -Os optimization flag to reduce size. Can this give an estimate of how much compression it would achieve? Are there any methods to solve the BinaryArchive size issue without impacting performance?

Hi, I am working with a large project. We are compiling each material to its own .metallib. They all include many common files full of inline functions. Finally we link it all together at the end with a single big pathtrace kernel. Everything works as expected, however the compile times have gotten completely out of hand and it takes multiple minutes to compile at runtime (to native code). I have gathered that I can do this offline by using metal-tt however if I am wondering if there is a way to reduce the compile times in such a scenario, and how to investigate what the root cause of the problem is. I suspect it could have to do with the fact that every materials metallib contains duplications of all the inline functions. Any ideas on how to profile and debug this? Thanks, Rasmus

Just wondering if anyone knows what it will take to hit greater than 60hz when targeting iPhone. If I set the preferredFramesPerSecond of an MTKView to 120, it works on the iPad, but on iPhone it never goes over 60hz, even with a simple hello triangle sample app... is this a limitation of targeting iPhone?

I am trying to learn the new Metal Peformance Primitives APIs. I have added the MetalPeformancePrimitives framework and included the header in my shader code as per documentation #include <MetalPeformancePrimitives/MetalPeformancePrimitives.h> Unfortunately, Xcode complains that the header cannot be found. How do I include it properly? I am using Xcode 26 on Tahoe. The MetalPeformancePrimitives framework is present on my machine and I can inspect the headers in the filesystem.

I'm updating our app to support metal 4, but the metal 4 types don't seem to get recognized when targeting simulator. Is it known if metal 4 will be supported in the near future, or am I setting up the app wrong?

Now the examples of metal-cpp are target on desktop and using AppKit which is not supported on iOS. Is there any tips for developing with metal-cpp on mobile device?

I have a very simple Mac app with just a MTKView in it which shows a single color. I want to move the rendering code to C++. For this I created a C++ framework target which interoperates with the Swift code - main project target. I am trying to link metal-cpp library to the C++ framework target using these instructions. Approach described in this article works with simple C++ Mac console apps. But in my mixed Swift/C++ project Xcode cannot find Foundation/Foundation.hpp (and probably other headers) to include into the C++ header. I inserted metal-cpp folder into my project and added it to C++ target's header search paths, as written in the instructions.

We have a production Metal app with a complex multithreaded Metal pipeline. When everything is operating smoothly, it works great. Even when extremely overloaded, it does not crash for days at a time. This isn't good enough for our users. Unfortunately, when I have zero visibility into id, I have no way of knowing when metal is "done" with an id. When overloaded, stale metal render passes need to be 'aborted', which results in metal callbacks not being called. for example, these callbacks may not be called after an aborted pass: id<MTLCommandBuffer> m_cmdbuf; [m_cmdbuf addScheduledHandler:^(id <MTLCommandBuffer> cb) { cpr->scheduled = MachAbsoluteTime(); }]; [m_cmdbuf addCompletedHandler:^(id <MTLCommandBuffer> cb) { cpr->completed = MachAbsoluteTime(); }]; For the moment, our workaround is a system which waits a few seconds after we "think" a rendering pass should be done with all its (aborted) resources before releasing buffers. This is not ideal, to say the least. So, in summary, my question is, it would be nice to be able to 'query' an id to know when metal is done with it, so that we know that its safe to release it along with our own internal resources. Is there any such (undocumented) mechanism? I have exhaustively read all existing Metal documentation many times. An idea that I've been toying with... it would be nice to have something akin to Zombie detection running all the time for id only. In OpenGL, it was OK to use a released texture... you may display a bad frame, but not CRASH!. Is there any similar option for id?

How many 32-bit variables can I use concurrently in a single thread of a Metal compute kernel without worrying about the variables getting spilled into the device memory? Alternatively: how many 32-bit registers does a single thread have available for itself? Let's say that each thread of my compute kernel needs to store and work with its own array of N float variables, where N can be 128, 256, 512 or more. To achieve maximum possible performance, I do not want to the local thread variables to get spilled into the slow device memory. I want all N variables to be stored "on-chip", in the thread memory space. To make my question more concrete, let's say there is an array thread float localArray[N]. Assuming an unrealistic hypothetical scenario where localArray is the only variable in the whole kernel, what is the maximum value of N for which no portion of localArray would get spilled into the device memory? I searched in the Metal feature set tables, but I could not find any details.