In the old simulator you were able to simply drag a photo or video from your desktop into the photos app within the simulator in order to use it for testing. That doesn't seem to be working yet in Device Hub. Is there a workaround or are we just waiting on this to be fixed?

Somewhere since iOS 26, the LockedCameraCapture framework gets in an unpredictable state after opening the main app from the LockedCamera extension using LockedCameraCaptureSession.openApplication(for userActivity:). (Feedback with sample code to reproduce: FB21966835) Opening the extension from the lock screen again doesn’t open the extension but puts the lock screen in a state as if it has. Content updated from LockedCameraCaptureManager.shared.sessionContentUpdates comes in inconsistently, usually needs the app to be opened again or the extension to be opened. This makes using this extension impossible for me as I use it to record video files that manually need to be imported when the app is launched (so not through PhotoKit). Does anybody have a suggestion to circumvent this issue or how to get this fixed?

My app currently supports display and editing of RAW files in HDR mode (Extended Dynamic Range). I came across 2 issues: In HDR mode, if I am using the default boostAmount = 1.0, then some of the highlight colors will shift. Like a clear blue sky becomes a light gray / light purple sky. I've to set boostAmount = 0.0 to avoid this problem. Is this a bug or is there a way to keep the Apple colors and not having this issue? The Shadow and highlight filter does not appear to work correctly in HDR mode, I've it hooked up in the linearSpaceFilter. Would be nice if you guys can introduce a spatial aware shadow & highlight filter.

It's unclear if this is a bug or a new feature but I have noticed that my photos starting coming out looking more stylised than expected and worked out that it was because photographic styles were being applied even tho I was taking photos through a third party app. Is there a way to disable this behaviour if it is intended? I've raised a feedback report #FB23632714 Photographic Styles [OFF] Photographic Styles [ON] My settings:

For a PHAsset in the same Photos library on the same device/Mac, what are the documented stability guarantees of PHObject.localIdentifier? Is it safe to persist and use for future PhotoKit operations in that same local library? Are there known cases where it can change or stop resolving? If a persisted localIdentifier no longer resolves but a persisted PHCloudIdentifier.archivalStringValue does resolve in the same library, is updating the stored local identifier from that cloud mapping the recommended recovery path? Thanks!

I've been trying to implement the newly touted high resolution capture at 24MP from WWDC26: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/304/ However it seems it's only possible to capture 24mp photos if you enable autoDeferredPhotoDelivery? This is quite frustrating as my app wants to run the image output through shaders and effects before saving. Is there a way round this limiation?

Hi everyone, I’m working on a camera app as a learning project and have reached a point where I’m trying to better understand the intended architecture for Live Photo capture using AVCapturePhotoOutput. The app currently supports: Live Photos Depth data Location metadata Multiple lens presets on a virtual multi-camera device Everything is working well, but I’m now thinking about capture throughput and rapid shutter presses. Right now, my implementation is fairly conservative. I wait for a Live Photo capture to finish processing and importing before allowing another capture. This is reliable, but it doesn’t feel particularly camera-like when compared to Apple’s Camera app. One observation from field testing caught my attention: I took a Live Photo, immediately switched lenses, then took another Live Photo. When I viewed the first Live Photo later, the movie portion included the lens-switching actions that occurred after I pressed the shutter. That made me realize that I may be thinking about the capture lifecycle incorrectly. My questions are: When using AVCapturePhotoOutput with Live Photos enabled, what is the earliest point at which a capture can be considered “safely secured”? Is it expected that apps wait for PhotoKit import to complete before accepting another Live Photo capture request? If supporting rapid sequential shutter presses, is the recommended approach to queue capture requests and process them one at a time? Are there any best practices around lens changes or camera reconfiguration while a Live Photo is still being captured or processed? I’m not looking for details about the implementation of Apple’s Camera app. I’m mainly trying to understand the recommended approach when working with the public AVFoundation APIs. I’d appreciate any guidance, documentation references, or examples from developers who have worked through similar problems. Thanks!

How control camera Zoom in and Zoom out from external remote by sending HID

In WWDC26 video "Camera and Photo Technologies Group Lab", @14:17, Brad Ford mentions that we can use isCinematicVideoCaptureEnabled on videoDeviceInput to display depth blur on camera preview, even on a photo camera app. However, when I turn it on for depth mode, the API tells me that it is not supported with the current camera, which is Dual or Dual Wide cameras I use for depth. Since there are no other resources on this, I would love to get some guidance on how to do this. I just want to display depth blur on camera preview, that is it.

version: iOS 17+ When requesting Photo Library access on iOS, the system displays a standard permission dialog. I just wanna save a image to user's photo library. Is it possible to replace or customize this system permission popup with a fully custom-designed UI? If customization is not allowed, is the recommended approach to first present a custom explanatory popup or screen and then trigger the system permission dialog?

Providing a response and feedback to this: https://origin-devforums.apple.com/forums/thread/827311 and https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/827043?page=1#889020022 I have a created a feedback/bug report with ID FB22823733 Feedback Report: I have created a feedback report as well like recommended with this ID: FB22823733, with more elaborate images of my implementation, also see here More clarity: Yes, this is for an iOS app(iOS 18+) but testing and debugging on Xcode(MacOS 15.7.7, M4 24GB), which traps or hangs on getting to [PhotogrammetrySample] even while using the lazy sequence and the contentsOf as specified in your docs. I also tried using the PhotogrammetrySession folder run but its still failed with : CoreOC.PhotogrammetrySession.Error 6 and I understand to mean alignment failed. What can be done or do you guys expose any functions that can be used to aid, or handle these internally, can't find any internally. The ObjectMasks are actually segmentation masks from an ML algorithm . To replicate try calling PhotogrammetrySession(input: [PhotogrammetrySample]) with contentsOf as captured on your documentation, even with like 30 image set or is there something I'm missing.

Hi, I have been trying to capture the EXIF metadata using JS from the images while selecting them in a web-app using simple file/photo picker. There's an option to adjust the original datetime for any image in iOS photos app and that's where my query starts. Whenever and image with adjusted date is selected in the browser using the photo picker, the image being given to the browser contains the adjusted date as the original date without any metadata tag containing the original timestamp from the image. Is there any way to capture the original timestamp in a web-app from the image even after it's timestamp is adjusted in IOS photos app? Also, if I may ask what might be the intended reason for this functionality since I could not get hands on something concrete and convincing about this, specially considering that we are able to adjust the timestamp to a value way ahead in the future as well. Any help and support is highly appreciated!

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

Through the Photos framework, we can access (and thus backup) resources the user created in Photos, such as Adjustments.plist, AdjustmentsSecondary.data, .aae files and more. Is there any way to restore those resources back into the Photos library? (e.g., similar to dropping a combination of .heic and .mov file to restore a Live Photo)

I'm implementing a PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension to back up photos and videos from the user's library to our cloud storage service. Our existing upload infrastructure uses chunked uploads for large files (splitting videos into smaller byte ranges and uploading each chunk separately). This approach: Allows resumable uploads if interrupted Stays within server-side request size limits Provides granular progress tracking Looking at the PHAssetResourceUploadJobChangeRequest.createJob(destination:resource:) API, I don't see a way to specify byte ranges or create multiple jobs for chunks of the same resource. Questions: Does the system handle large files (1GB+) automatically under the hood, or is there a recommended maximum file size for a single upload job? Is there a supported pattern for chunked/resumable uploads, or should the destination URL endpoint handle the entire file in one request? If our server requires chunked uploads (e.g., BITS protocol with CreateSession → Fragment → CloseSession), is this extension the right mechanism, or should we use a different approach for large videos? Any guidance on best practices for large asset uploads would be greatly appreciated. Environment: iOS 26, Xcode 18

I would like to use the memory limit during interactive editing on iOS to decrease jetsam risk. However, I'm unsure of what to set it to. Do you have a recommendation as a fraction of physical memory? I have set the extended virtual memory entitlement, but I don't know what fraction of physical memory (or more) that entitlement enables - perhaps I should use a larger memory limit for M1-based iPads?

Thanks for adding CoreML into the Apple RAW decoder. I'm excited with what it can bring. But I'm having a number of issues with it. My code base is written in Objective-C, and I'm using my custom MTKView. Now when I enabled RAW 9 support, the render is extremely slow (instant vs seconds). The UI would appear to hang with a spinning color wheel. It feels like CoreML processing is being delegated in the rendering thread, which runs on the main queue. How can I improve performance? As someone has reported, there is a black horizontal line in the middle of the image. The image that I was testing came from Fuji X-T5. If I enable EDR (Extended Dynamic Range), RAW 9 stops rendering, and will return ANE error. My app does HDR rendering of RAW files. I cannot get something like Sony A7R IV ARW image to load. Same ANE error. Is there a memory setting I need to tweak? When I render the X-T5 image, the colors appear to be overly saturated, which is different from the result of RAW 8. I cannot speak for the color rendering of other types of RAW files. I was told code base with Catalyst (and perhaps Swift) works without issue, other than being slow (except for large RAW files), but there seems to be an issue with Objective-C?

What is the difference (if any) between RAW 9 and RAW 9.DNG in terms of quality, noise reduction, and color?

Are color differences expected for any cameras? I have heard some reports, but have not seen it myself. If it's not expected, then I can get those people to file bugs.

Is the memoryLimit option mentioned in WWDC26 session 305 the same option as CIContextOption.memoryTarget? The session says the default memory target on iOS is 256 MB. What is the default memoryTarget on macOS? Also, the session recommends the Extended Virtual Addressing entitlement for interactive RAW editing. That entitlement does not appear to be available for macOS, so does Core Image automatically use a larger intermediate cache budget on macOS? Should memoryTarget be used only for export contexts, or can/should it also be tuned for interactive editing contexts with cacheIntermediates enabled? Thanks!