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 Machine Learning and AI Frameworks. What are you most excited about in the Foundation Models framework? The Foundation Models framework provides access to an on-device Large Language Model (LLM), enabling entirely on-device processing for intelligent features. This allows you to build features such as personalized search suggestions and dynamic NPC generation in games. The combination of guided generation and streaming capabilities is particularly exciting for creating delightful animations and features with reliable output. The seamless integration with SwiftUI and the new design material Liquid Glass is also a major advantage. When should I still bring my own LLM via CoreML? It's generally recommended to first explore Apple's built-in system models and APIs, including the Foundation Models framework, as they are highly optimized for Apple devices and cover a wide range of use cases. However, Core ML is still valuable if you need more control or choice over the specific model being deployed, such as customizing existing system models or augmenting prompts. Core ML provides the tools to get these models on-device, but you are responsible for model distribution and updates. Should I migrate PyTorch code to MLX? MLX is an open-source, general-purpose machine learning framework designed for Apple Silicon from the ground up. It offers a familiar API, similar to PyTorch, and supports C, C++, Python, and Swift. MLX emphasizes unified memory, a key feature of Apple Silicon hardware, which can improve performance. It's recommended to try MLX and see if its programming model and features better suit your application's needs. MLX shines when working with state-of-the-art, larger models. Can I test Foundation Models in Xcode simulator or device? Yes, you can use the Xcode simulator to test Foundation Models use cases. However, your Mac must be running macOS Tahoe. You can test on a physical iPhone running iOS 18 by connecting it to your Mac and running Playgrounds or live previews directly on the device. Which on-device models will be supported? any open source models? The Foundation Models framework currently supports Apple's first-party models only. This allows for platform-wide optimizations, improving battery life and reducing latency. While Core ML can be used to integrate open-source models, it's generally recommended to first explore the built-in system models and APIs provided by Apple, including those in the Vision, Natural Language, and Speech frameworks, as they are highly optimized for Apple devices. For frontier models, MLX can run very large models. How often will the Foundational Model be updated? How do we test for stability when the model is updated? The Foundation Model will be updated in sync with operating system updates. You can test your app against new model versions during the beta period by downloading the beta OS and running your app. It is highly recommended to create an "eval set" of golden prompts and responses to evaluate the performance of your features as the model changes or as you tweak your prompts. Report any unsatisfactory or satisfactory cases using Feedback Assistant. Which on-device model/API can I use to extract text data from images such as: nutrition labels, ingredient lists, cashier receipts, etc? Thank you. The Vision framework offers the RecognizeDocumentRequest which is specifically designed for these use cases. It not only recognizes text in images but also provides the structure of the document, such as rows in a receipt or the layout of a nutrition label. It can also identify data like phone numbers, addresses, and prices. What is the context window for the model? What are max tokens in and max tokens out? The context window for the Foundation Model is 4,096 tokens. The split between input and output tokens is flexible. For example, if you input 4,000 tokens, you'll have 96 tokens remaining for the output. The API takes in text, converting it to tokens under the hood. When estimating token count, a good rule of thumb is 3-4 characters per token for languages like English, and 1 character per token for languages like Japanese or Chinese. Handle potential errors gracefully by asking for shorter prompts or starting a new session if the token limit is exceeded. Is there a rate limit for Foundation Models API that is limited by power or temperature condition on the iPhone? Yes, there are rate limits, particularly when your app is in the background. A budget is allocated for background app usage, but exceeding it will result in rate-limiting errors. In the foreground, there is no rate limit unless the device is under heavy load (e.g., camera open, game mode). The system dynamically balances performance, battery life, and thermal conditions, which can affect the token throughput. Use appropriate quality of service settings for your tasks (e.g., background priority for background work) to help the system manage resources effectively. Do the foundation models support languages other than English? Yes, the on-device Foundation Model is multilingual and supports all languages supported by Apple Intelligence. To get the model to output in a specific language, prompt it with instructions indicating the user's preferred language using the locale API (e.g., "The user's preferred language is en-US"). Putting the instructions in English, but then putting the user prompt in the desired output language is a recommended practice. Are larger server-based models available through Foundation Models? No, the Foundation Models API currently only provides access to the on-device Large Language Model at the core of Apple Intelligence. It does not support server-side models. On-device models are preferred for privacy and for performance reasons. Is it possible to run Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using the Foundation Models framework? Yes, it is possible to run RAG on-device, but the Foundation Models framework does not include a built-in embedding model. You'll need to use a separate database to store vectors and implement nearest neighbor or cosine distance searches. The Natural Language framework offers simple word and sentence embeddings that can be used. Consider using a combination of Foundation Models and Core ML, using Core ML for your embedding model.

I am running some experiments with WebGPU using the wgpu crate in rust. I have some Buffers already allocated in the GPU. Is it possible to use those already existing buffers directly as inputs to a predict call in CoreML? I want to prevent gpu to cpu download time as much as possible. Or are there any other ways to do something like this. Is this only possible using the latest Tensor object which came out with Metal 4 ?

When I ran the following code on a physical iPhone device that supports Apple Intelligence, I encountered the following error log. What does this internal error code mean? Image generation failed with NSError in a different domain: Error Domain=ImagePlaygroundInternal.ImageGeneration.GenerationError Code=11 “(null)”, returning a generic error instead let imageCreator = try await ImageCreator() let style = imageCreator.availableStyles.first ?? .animation let stream = imageCreator.images(for: [.text("cat")], style: style, limit: 1) for try await result in stream { // error: ImagePlayground.ImageCreator.Error.creationFailed _ = result.cgImage }

It seems to be that Swift has more APIs implemented than the C++ interface (especially APIs found in the MLXNN and MLXOptimize folders). Is there any intention to implement more APIs for neural networks and training them in the future?

Hi everyone Im currently developing an object detection model that shall identify up to seven classes in an image. While im usually doing development with basic python and the ultralytics library, i thought i would like to give CreateML a shot. The experience is actually very nice, except for the fact that the model seem not to be using any ANE or GPU (MPS) for accelerated training. On https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/create-ml/ it states: "On-device training Train models blazingly fast right on your Mac while taking advantage of CPU and GPU." Am I doing something wrong? Im running the training on Apple M1 Pro 16GB MacOS 26.1 (Tahoe) Xcode 26.1 (Build version 17B55) It would be super nice to get some feedback or instructions. Thank you in advance!

Hi all, I spent the last few months developing an MLX/Ollama local AI Benchmarking suite for Apple Silicon, written in pure Swift and signed with an Apple Developer Certificate, open source, GPL, and free. I would love some feedback to continue development. It is the only benchmarking suite I know of that supports live power metrics and MLX natively, as well as quick exports for benchmark results, and an arena mode, Model A vs B with history. I really want this project to succeed, and have widespread use, so getting 75 stars on the github repo makes it eligible for Homebrew/Cask distribution. Github Repo

Hi From https://developer.apple.com/metal/jax/ I checked all active workflows on https://github.com/jax-ml/jax and any open issues with tags Metal and seems in DEC 2025 the Jax maintainers have closed all issues citing No active development on Jax-metal and the project seems dead. We need to know how can we leverage Apple silicon for accelerated projects using popular academia library and tools . Is the JAX project still going to be supported or Apple has plans to bring something of tis own that might be platform agnostic . Thanks

I followed below url for converting Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct model but always fails even i have 64GB of free space after downloading model from huggingface. https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/core-ml-on-device-llama Also tried with other models Llama-3.1-1B-Instruct & Llama-3.1-3B-Instruct models those are converted but while doing performance test in xcode fails for all compunits. Is there any source code to run llama models in ios app.

Hello Apple Developer Community, I'm investigating Core ML model loading behavior and noticed that even when the compiled model path remains unchanged after an APP update, the first run still triggers an "uncached load" process. This seems to impact user experience with unnecessary delays. Question: Does Core ML provide any public API to check whether a compiled model (from a specific .mlmodelc path) is already cached in the system? If such API exists, we'd like to use it for pre-loading decision logic - only perform background pre-load when the model isn't cached. Has anyone encountered similar scenarios or found official solutions? Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

We built an open-source macOS menu bar app that turns speech into text and pastes it into the active app — using SpeechAnalyzer for on-device transcription, ScreenCaptureKit + Vision for screen-aware context, and FluidAudio for speaker diarization in meeting mode. Here's what we learned shipping it on macOS 26. GitHub: github.com/Marvinngg/ambient-voice Architecture The app has two modes: hotkey dictation (press to talk, release to inject) and meeting recording (continuous transcription with a floating panel). Dictation Mode Audio capture uses AVCaptureSession (more on why below). The captured audio feeds into SpeechAnalyzer via an AsyncStream: let transcriber = SpeechTranscriber( locale: locale, transcriptionOptions: [], reportingOptions: [.volatileResults, .alternativeTranscriptions], attributeOptions: [.audioTimeRange, .transcriptionConfidence] ) let analyzer = SpeechAnalyzer(modules: [transcriber]) let (inputSequence, inputBuilder) = AsyncStream.makeStream() try await analyzer.start(inputSequence: inputSequence) While recording, we capture a screenshot of the focused window using ScreenCaptureKit, run Vision OCR (VNRecognizeTextRequest), extract keywords, and inject them into SpeechAnalyzer as contextual bias: let context = AnalysisContext() context.contextualStrings[.general] = ocrKeywords try await analyzer.setContext(context) This improves accuracy for technical terms and proper nouns visible on screen. If your screen shows "SpeechAnalyzer", saying it out loud is more likely to be transcribed correctly. After transcription, an optional L2 step sends the text through a local LLM (ollama) for spoken-to-written cleanup, then CGEvent simulates Cmd+V to paste into the active app. Meeting Mode Meeting mode forks the same audio stream to two consumers: SpeechAnalyzer — real-time streaming transcription, displayed in a floating NSPanel FluidAudio buffer — accumulates 16kHz Float32 mono samples for batch speaker diarization after recording stops When the user ends the meeting, FluidAudio's performCompleteDiarization() runs on the accumulated audio. We align transcription segments with speaker segments using audioTimeRange overlap matching — each transcription segment gets assigned the speaker ID with the most time overlap. Results export to Markdown. Pitfalls We Hit on macOS 26 1. AVAudioEngine installTap doesn't fire with Bluetooth devices We started with AVAudioEngine.inputNode.installTap() for audio capture. It worked fine with built-in mics but the tap callback never fired with Bluetooth devices (tested with vivo TWS 4 Hi-Fi). Fix: switched to AVCaptureSession. The delegate callback captureOutput(_:didOutput:from:) fires reliably regardless of audio device. The tradeoff is you get CMSampleBuffer instead of AVAudioPCMBuffer, so you need a conversion step. 2. NSEvent addGlobalMonitorForEvents crashes Our global hotkey listener used NSEvent.addGlobalMonitorForEvents. On macOS 26, this crashes with a Bus error inside GlobalObserverHandler — appears to be a Swift actor runtime issue. Fix: switched to CGEventTap. Works reliably, but the callback runs on a CFRunLoop context, which Swift doesn't recognize as MainActor. 3. CGEventTap callbacks aren't on MainActor If your CGEventTap callback touches any @MainActor state, you'll get concurrency violations. The callback runs on whatever thread owns the CFRunLoop. Fix: bridge with DispatchQueue.main.async {} inside the tap callback before touching any MainActor state. 4. CGPreflightScreenCaptureAccess doesn't request permission We used CGPreflightScreenCaptureAccess() as a guard before calling ScreenCaptureKit. If it returned false, we'd bail out. The problem: this function only checks — it never triggers macOS to add your app to the Screen Recording permission list. Chicken-and-egg: you can't get permission because you never ask for it. Fix: call CGRequestScreenCaptureAccess() at app startup. This adds your app to System Settings → Screen Recording. Then let ScreenCaptureKit calls proceed without the preflight guard — SCShareableContent will also trigger the permission prompt on first use. 5. Ad-hoc signing breaks TCC permissions on every rebuild During development, codesign --sign - (ad-hoc) generates a different code directory hash on every build. macOS TCC tracks permissions by this hash, so every rebuild = new app identity = all permissions reset. Fix: sign with a stable certificate. If you have an Apple Development certificate, use that. The TeamIdentifier stays constant across rebuilds, so TCC permissions persist. We also discovered that launching via open WE.app (LaunchServices) instead of directly executing the binary is required — otherwise macOS attributes TCC permissions to Terminal, not your app. Benchmarks We ran end-to-end benchmarks on public datasets (Mac Mini M4 16GB, macOS 26): Transcription (SpeechAnalyzer, AliMeeting Chinese): • Near-field CER 34% (excluding outliers ~25%) • Far-field CER 40% (single channel, no beamforming, >30% overlap) • Processing speed 74-89x real-time Speaker diarization (FluidAudio offline): • AMI English 16 meetings: avg DER 23.2% (collar=0.25s, ignoreOverlap=True) • AliMeeting Chinese 8 meetings: DER 48.5% (including overlap regions) • Memory: RSS ~500MB, peak 730-930MB Full evaluation methodology, scripts, and raw results are in the repo. Open Source The project is MIT licensed: github.com/Marvinngg/ambient-voice It includes the macOS client (Swift 6.2, SPM), server-side distillation/training scripts (Python), and a complete evaluation framework with reproducible benchmarks. Feedback and contributions welcome.

I am developing a macOS application using SwiftUI (with an iOS version as well). One feature we are exploring is displaying an avatar that reads or speaks dynamically generated text produced by an AI service. The basic flow would be: Text generated by an AI service Text converted to speech using a TTS engine An avatar (2D or 3D) rendered in the app that animates lip movement synchronized with the speech Ideally the avatar would render locally on the device. Questions: What Apple frameworks would be most appropriate for implementing a speaking avatar? SceneKit RealityKit SpriteKit (for 2D avatars) Is there any recommended way to drive lip-sync animation from speech audio using Apple frameworks? Does AVSpeechSynthesizer expose phoneme or viseme timing information that could be used for avatar animation? If such timing information is not available, what is the recommended approach for synchronizing character mouth animation with speech audio on macOS/iOS? Are there examples of real-time character animation synchronized with speech on macOS/iOS? Any architectural guidance or references would be greatly appreciated.

I'm using Vision framework (DetectFaceLandmarksRequest) with the same code and the same test image to detect face landmarks. On iOS 18 everything works as expected: detected face landmarks align with the face correctly. But when I run the same code on devices with iOS 26, the landmark coordinates are outside the [0,1] range, which indicates they are out of face bounds. Fun fact: the old VNDetectFaceLandmarksRequest API works very well without encountering this issue How I get face landmarks: private let faceRectangleRequest = DetectFaceRectanglesRequest(.revision3) private var faceLandmarksRequest = DetectFaceLandmarksRequest(.revision3) func detectFaces(in ciImage: CIImage) async throws -> FaceTrackingResult { let faces = try await faceRectangleRequest.perform(on: ciImage) faceLandmarksRequest.inputFaceObservations = faces let landmarksResults = try await faceLandmarksRequest.perform(on: ciImage) ... } How I show face landmarks in SwiftUI View: private func convert( point: NormalizedPoint, faceBoundingBox: NormalizedRect, imageSize: CGSize ) -> CGPoint { let point = point.toImageCoordinates( from: faceBoundingBox, imageSize: imageSize, origin: .upperLeft ) return point } At the same time, it works as expected and gives me the correct results: region is FaceObservation.Landmarks2D.Region let points: [CGPoint] = region.pointsInImageCoordinates( imageSize, origin: .upperLeft ) After that, I found that the landmarks are normalized relative to the unalignedBoundingBox. However, I can’t access it in code. Still, using these values for the bounding box works correctly. Things I've already tried: Same image input Tested multiple devices on iOS 26.2 -> always wrong. Tested multiple devices on iOS 18.7.1 -> always correct. Environment: macOS 26.2 Xcode 26.2 (17C52) Real devices, not simulator Face Landmarks iOS 18 Face Landmarks iOS 26

Does anyone know if ExecuTorch is officially supported or has been successfully used on visionOS? If so, are there any specific build instructions, example projects, or potential issues (like sandboxing or memory limitations) to be aware of when integrating it into an Xcode project for the Vision Pro? While ExecuTorch has support for iOS, I can't find any official documentation or community examples specifically mentioning visionOS. Thanks.

Environment: macOS 26.2 (Tahoe) Xcode 16.3 Apple Silicon (M4) Sandboxed Mac App Store app Description: Repeated use of VNRecognizeTextRequest causes permanent memory growth in the host process. The physical footprint increases by approximately 3-15 MB per OCR call and never returns to baseline, even after all references to the request, handler, observations, and image are released. ` private func selectAndProcessImage() { let panel = NSOpenPanel() panel.allowedContentTypes = [.image] panel.allowsMultipleSelection = false panel.canChooseDirectories = false panel.message = "Select an image for OCR processing" guard panel.runModal() == .OK, let url = panel.url else { return } selectedImageURL = url isProcessing = true recognizedText = "Processing..." // Run OCR on a background thread to keep UI responsive let workItem = DispatchWorkItem { let result = performOCR(on: url) DispatchQueue.main.async { recognizedText = result isProcessing = false } } DispatchQueue.global(qos: .userInitiated).async(execute: workItem) } private func performOCR(on url: URL) -> String { // Wrap EVERYTHING in autoreleasepool so all ObjC objects are drained immediately let resultText: String = autoreleasepool { // Load image and convert to CVPixelBuffer for explicit memory control guard let imageData = try? Data(contentsOf: url) else { return "Error: Could not read image file." } guard let nsImage = NSImage(data: imageData) else { return "Error: Could not create image from file data." } guard let cgImage = nsImage.cgImage(forProposedRect: nil, context: nil, hints: nil) else { return "Error: Could not create CGImage." } let width = cgImage.width let height = cgImage.height // Create a CVPixelBuffer from the CGImage var pixelBuffer: CVPixelBuffer? let attrs: [String: Any] = [ kCVPixelBufferCGImageCompatibilityKey as String: true, kCVPixelBufferCGBitmapContextCompatibilityKey as String: true ] let status = CVPixelBufferCreate( kCFAllocatorDefault, width, height, kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB, attrs as CFDictionary, &pixelBuffer ) guard status == kCVReturnSuccess, let buffer = pixelBuffer else { return "Error: Could not create CVPixelBuffer (status: \(status))." } // Draw the CGImage into the pixel buffer CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(buffer, []) guard let context = CGContext( data: CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(buffer), width: width, height: height, bitsPerComponent: 8, bytesPerRow: CVPixelBufferGetBytesPerRow(buffer), space: CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(), bitmapInfo: CGImageAlphaInfo.noneSkipFirst.rawValue ) else { CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(buffer, []) return "Error: Could not create CGContext for pixel buffer." } context.draw(cgImage, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height)) CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(buffer, []) // Run OCR let requestHandler = VNImageRequestHandler(cvPixelBuffer: buffer, options: [:]) let request = VNRecognizeTextRequest() request.recognitionLevel = .accurate request.usesLanguageCorrection = true do { try requestHandler.perform([request]) } catch { return "Error during OCR: \(error.localizedDescription)" } guard let observations = request.results, !observations.isEmpty else { return "No text found in image." } let lines = observations.compactMap { observation in observation.topCandidates(1).first?.string } // Explicitly nil out the pixel buffer before the pool drains pixelBuffer = nil return lines.joined(separator: "\n") } // Everything — Data, NSImage, CGImage, CVPixelBuffer, VN objects — released here return resultText } `

I don't know if these forums are any good for rumors or plans, but does anybody know whether or not Apple plans to release a library for training reinforcement learning? It would be handy, implementing games in Swift, for example, to be able to train the computer players on the same code.

Hello everyone, I’m currently working with the Message Filtering Extension and would really appreciate some clarification around its performance and operational constraints. While the extension is extremely powerful and useful, I’ve found that some important details are either unclear or not well covered in the available documentation. There are two main areas I’m trying to understand better: Machine learning model constraints within the extension In our case, we already have an existing ML model that classifies messages (and are not dependant on Apple's built-in models). We’re evaluating whether and how it can be used inside the extension. Specifically, I’m trying to understand: Are there documented limits on the size of an ML model (e.g., maximum bundle size or model file size in MB)? What are the memory constraints for a model once loaded into memory by the extension? Under what conditions would the system terminate or “kick out” the extension due to memory or performance pressure? Message processing timeouts and execution constraints What is the timeout for processing a single received message? At what point will the OS stop waiting for the extension’s response and allow the message by default (for example, if the extension does not respond in time)? Any guidance, official references, or practical experience from Apple engineers or other developers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help,

Hi everyone, I’m currently exploring the use of Foundation models on Apple platforms to build a chatbot-style assistant within an app. While the integration part is straightforward using the new FoundationModel APIs, I’m trying to figure out how to control the assistant’s responses more tightly — particularly: Ensuring the assistant adheres to a specific tone, context, or domain (e.g. hospitality, healthcare, etc.) Preventing hallucinations or unrelated outputs Constraining responses based on app-specific rules, structured data, or recent interactions I’ve experimented with prompt, systemMessage, and few-shot examples to steer outputs, but even with carefully generated prompts, the model occasionally produces incorrect or out-of-scope responses. Additionally, when using multiple tools, I'm unsure how best to structure the setup so the model can select the correct pathway/tool and respond appropriately. Is there a recommended approach to guiding the model's decision-making when several tools or structured contexts are involved? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts or being pointed toward related WWDC sessions, Apple docs, or sample projects.

I'm running MacOs 26 Beta 5. I noticed that I can no longer achieve 100% usage on the ANE as I could before with Apple Foundations on-device model. Has Apple activated some kind of throttling or power limiting of the ANE? I cannot get above 3w or 40% usage now since upgrading. I'm on the high power energy mode. I there an API rate limit being applied? I kave a M4 Pro mini with 64 GB of memory.

The documentation for the Create ML tool ("Building an object detector data source") mentions that there are options for using normalized values instead of pixels and also different anchor point origins ("MLBoundingBoxCoordinatesOrigin") instead of always using "center". However, the JSON format for these does not appear in any examples. Does anyone know the format for these options?

I'm downloading a fine-tuned model from HuggingFace which is then cached on my Mac when the app first starts. However, I wanted to test adding a progress bar to show the download progress. To test this I need to delete the cached model. From what I've seen online this is cached at /Users/userName/.cache/huggingface/hub However, if I delete the files from here, using Terminal, the app still seems to be able to access the model. Is the model cached somewhere else? On my iPhone it seems deleting the app also deletes the cached model (app data) so that is useful.

Hi, I am new to developing on Apple’s platform yet I want to familiarize myself with Core ML and Core ML Tools. I was watching the WWDC24: Bring your machine learning and AI models to Apple Silicon video and was trying to follow along. After multiple attempts and much reading up on documentation, I am still unable to get a coherent script running that will convert the Mistral model that the host used and convert it to a valid Core ML model. here is a pastebin to what i have currently: https://pastebin.com/04cVjF1v if you require the output as well please let me know