We are facing a strange issue where a small portion of our large userbase can not start the capture session in our app, as it gets interrupted with the following reason: AVCaptureSessionInterruptionReasonVideoDeviceNotAvailableWithMultipleForegroundApps Our users are all from iPhones, no one is using an iPad. Just to be sure we have set session.isMultitaskingCameraAccessEnabled = true but it does not seem to make any difference. Another weird interruption we are seeing

iOS 26.0 (23A5276f) – Bluetooth Call Audio Issue I’m experiencing a Bluetooth audio issue on iOS 26.0 (build 23A5276f). I cannot make or receive phone calls properly using Bluetooth devices — this affects both my car’s Bluetooth system and my AirPods Pro (2nd generation). Notably: Regular phone calls have no audio (either I can’t hear the other person, or they can’t hear me). WhatsApp and other VoIP apps work fine with the same Bluetooth devices. Media playback (music, video, etc.) works without issues over Bluetooth. It seems this bug is limited to the native Phone app or the system audio routing for regular cellular calls. Please advise if this is a known issue or if a fix is expected in upcoming beta releases.

Hey, Quick question. I noticed that Adobe's new app, Project Indigo, allows you to open the app using the Camera Control button. However, when your device is locked it just shows this screen: Would this normally be approved by the Appstore approval process? I ask because I would like to do something similar with my camera app. I know that this is not the best user experience, but my apps UI is not built in Swift and I don't have the resources to build the UI again. At least this way the user experience would be improved from what it is now, where users cannot even launch the app. I get many requests per week about this feature and would love to improve the UX for my users, even if it's not the best possible. Thanks, Alex

Hi, I’ve developed a photo app that includes a photo deletion feature. Some users have reported encountering PHPhotosError.operationInterrupted (3301) when attempting to delete photos. Initially, I suspected that some of the assets might have a sourceType of typeiTunesSynced, since the documentation notes that iTunes-synced assets cannot be edited or deleted. However, after checking the logs, all of the assets involved are of typeUserLibrary. Additionally, the user mentioned that some photos in the iPhone Photos do not show a delete button. I’m unsure whether the absence of the delete button is related to the 3301 error. I’d like to confirm the following: Under what conditions does PHPhotosError.operationInterrupted (3301) occur, and how should it be handled? Why do some photos in the iPhone Photos not show a delete button? The code for deleting photos is as follows: PHPhotoLibrary *library = [PHPhotoLibrary sharedPhotoLibrary]; [library performChanges:^{ PHFetchResult *assetsToBeDeleted = [PHAsset fetchAssetsWithLocalIdentifiers:delUrls options:nil]; if (assetsToBeDeleted) { [PHAssetChangeRequest deleteAssets:assetsToBeDeleted]; } } completionHandler:^(BOOL success, NSError *error) {

Since the last update to IOS 26.0 (23A5276f) the AirPods connect to my IPhone and the Audio is still running through the phone. They are shown in the Bluetooth Icon that they’re paired.

Hi everyone, I’m trying to use AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate to handle a live radio stream (e.g. Icecast/HTTP stream). My goal is to have access to the last 30 seconds of audio data during playback, so I can analyze it for specific audio patterns in near-real-time. I’ve implemented a custom resource loader that works fine for podcasts and static files, where the file size and content length are known. However, for infinite live streams, my current implementation stops receiving new loading requests after the first one is served. As a result, the playback either stalls or fails to continue. Has anyone successfully used AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate with a continuous radio stream? Or maybe you can suggest betterapproach for buffering and analyzing live audio? Any tips, examples, or advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Is there a way to permanently disable PHASE SDK logging? It seems to be a lot chattier than Apple's other SDKs. While developing a RealityKit app that uses AudioPlaybackController, I must manually hide the PHASE SDK log output several times each day so I can see my app's log messages. Thank you.

I'm working on a media app that would like to be able to tell if the TV connected to tvOS is running at 59.94hz or 60.00hz, so it can optimize a video stream. It looks like the best I can currently do is to check if the user has Match Content Rate enabled, and based on that, when calling displayManager.preferredDisplayCriteria to change video modes, I could guess which rate their TV might be in. It's not very ideal, because not all TVs support both of these rates, and my request for 59.94 might end up as 60 and vice versa. I dug around and can't find any available method in UIScreen to get this info. The odd thing is, the data is right there in currentMode when I look in the debugger, but it seems to be in a private or undocumented class. Is there any way to get at it?

Hi, I'm developing an application for macos and ios that has to run DetectHumanBodyPose3DRequest model in real time for retrieving the 3d skeleton from the camera. I'm experiencing a memory leak every time the model is used (when i comment that line, the memory stays constant). After a minute it uses about 1GB of ram running with mac catalyst. I attached a minimal project that has this problem Code Camera View import SwiftUI import Combine import Vision struct CameraView: View { @StateObject private var viewModel = CameraViewModel() var body: some View { HStack { ZStack { GeometryReader { geometry in if let image = viewModel.currentFrame { Image(decorative: image, scale: 1) .resizable() .scaledToFill() .frame(width: geometry.size.width, height: geometry.size.height) .clipped() } else { ProgressView() } } } } } } class CameraViewModel: ObservableObject { @Published var currentFrame: CGImage? @Published var frameRate: Double = 0 @Published var currentVisionBodyPose: HumanBodyPose3DObservation? // Store current body pose @Published var currentImageSize: CGSize? // Store current image size private var cameraManager: CameraManager? private var humanBodyPose = HumanBodyPose3DDetector() private var lastClassificationTime = Date() private var frameCount = 0 private var lastFrameTime = Date() private let classificationThrottleInterval: TimeInterval = 1.0 private var lastPoseSendTime: Date = .distantPast init() { cameraManager = CameraManager() startPreview() startClassification() } private func startPreview() { Task { guard let previewStream = cameraManager?.previewStream else { return } for await frame in previewStream { let size = CGSize(width: frame.width, height: frame.height) Task { @MainActor in self.currentFrame = frame self.currentImageSize = size self.updateFrameRate() } } } } private func startClassification() { Task { guard let classificationStream = cameraManager?.classificationStream else { return } for await pixelBuffer in classificationStream { self.classifyFrame(pixelBuffer: pixelBuffer) } } } private func classifyFrame(pixelBuffer: CVPixelBuffer) { humanBodyPose.runHumanBodyPose3DRequestOnImage(pixelBuffer: pixelBuffer) { [weak self] observation in guard let self = self else { return } DispatchQueue.main.async { if let observation = observation { self.currentVisionBodyPose = observation print(observation) } else { self.currentVisionBodyPose = nil } } } } private func updateFrameRate() { frameCount += 1 let now = Date() let elapsed = now.timeIntervalSince(lastFrameTime) if elapsed >= 1.0 { frameRate = Double(frameCount) / elapsed frameCount = 0 lastFrameTime = now } } } HumanBodyPose3DDetector import Foundation import Vision class HumanBodyPose3DDetector: NSObject, ObservableObject { @Published var humanObservation: HumanBodyPose3DObservation? = nil private let queue = DispatchQueue(label: "humanbodypose.queue") private let request = DetectHumanBodyPose3DRequest() private struct SendablePixelBuffer: @unchecked Sendable { let buffer: CVPixelBuffer } public func runHumanBodyPose3DRequestOnImage(pixelBuffer: CVPixelBuffer, completion: @escaping (HumanBodyPose3DObservation?) -> Void) { let sendableBuffer = SendablePixelBuffer(buffer: pixelBuffer) queue.async { [weak self] in Task { [weak self, sendableBuffer] in do { guard let self = self else { return } let result = try await self.request.perform(on: sendableBuffer.buffer) //process result DispatchQueue.main.async { if result.isEmpty { completion(nil) } else { completion(result[0]) } } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { completion(nil) } } } } } }

Hello. My team and I think we have an issue where our app is asked to gracefully shutdown with a following SIGTERM. As we’ve learned, this is normally not an issue. However, it seems to also be happening while our app (an audio streamer) is actively playing in the background. From our perspective, starting playback is indicating strong user intent. We understand that there can be extreme circumstances where the background audio needs to be killed, but should it be considered part of normal operation? We hope that’s not the case. All we see in the logs is the graceful shutdown request. We can say with high certainty that it’s happening though, as we know that playback is running within 0.5 seconds of the crash, without any other tracked user interaction. Can you verify if this is intended behavior, and if there’s something we can do about it from our end. From our logs it doesn’t look to be related to either memory usage within the app, or the system as a whole. Best, John

Issue: In iOS 26 (tested on Developer Beta), AVCaptureMetadataOutputObjectsDelegate no longer receives callbacks when using .face detection. metadataOutput.metadataObjectTypes = [.face]

Use case: When SharePlay -ing a fully immersive 3D scene (e.g. a virtual stage), I would like to shine lights on specific Personas, so they show up brighter when someone in the scene is recording the feed (think a camera person in the scene wearing Vision Pro). Note: This spotlight effect only needs to render in the camera person's headset and does NOT need to be journaled or shared. Before I dive into this, my technical question: Can environmental and/or scene lighting affect Persona brightness in a SharePlay? If not, is there a way to programmatically make Personas "brighter" when recording? My screen recordings always seem to turn out darker than what's rendered in environment, and manually adjusting the contrast tends to blow out the details in a Persona's face (especially in visionOS 26).

I'm creating an app that uses AVCaptureSession to pass camera input to AVCaptureMetadataOutput type set [metaout setMetadataObjectTypes:@[AVMetadataObjectTypeFace]] and scan Face. After updating to OS 26 Beta2 and iOS 26 Beta2, an issue has occurred where the delegate method of AVCaptureMetadataOutputObjectsDelegate is not called on some devices. The following devices are experiencing this issue. iPad (9th Gen) iPad air (4th Gen) iPhone 15 This issue has not occur on any other devices I have. I tried running the AVFoundation sample code on the Apple Developer site on the above device. The same problem still occurs. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/capture_setup/avcambarcode_detecting_barcodes_and_faces Are any additional settings required after OS 26 beta and iOS 26 beta? Or is there some problem on the OS side?

Hello. My app uses AVAudioRecorder to generate recording files, which are consistently only 4kb in size. Most users generate audio files normally, with only a few users experiencing this phenomenon occasionally. After uninstalling and installing the app, it will work normally, but it will reappear after a period of time. I have compared that the problematic audio files generated each time are fixed and cannot be played. Added the audioRecorderDidFinishRecording proxy method, which shows that the recording was completed normally. The user also reported that the recording is normal, but there is a problem with the generated file. How should I handle this issue? Look forward to your reply. - (void)startRecordWithOrderID:(NSString *)orderID { AVAudioSession *audioSession = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance]; [audioSession setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryRecord error:nil]; [audioSession setActive:YES error:nil]; NSMutableDictionary *settings = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithFloat: 8000.0] forKey:AVSampleRateKey]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt: kAudioFormatLinearPCM] forKey:AVFormatIDKey]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:16] forKey:AVLinearPCMBitDepthKey]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt: 1] forKey:AVNumberOfChannelsKey]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsBigEndianKey]; [settings setObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsFloatKey]; NSString *path = [WDUtility createDirInDocument:@"audios" withOrderID:orderID withPathExtension:@"wav"]; NSURL *tmpFile = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path]; recorder = [[AVAudioRecorder alloc] initWithURL:tmpFile settings:settings error:nil]; [recorder setDelegate:self]; [recorder prepareToRecord]; [recorder record]; }

I'm creating an app that uses AVCaptureSession to pass camera input to AVCaptureMetadataOutput type set [metaout setMetadataObjectTypes:@[AVMetadataObjectTypeFace]] and scan Face. After updating to OS 26 Beta2 and iOS 26 Beta2, an issue has occurred where the delegate method of AVCaptureMetadataOutputObjectsDelegate is not called on some devices. The following devices are experiencing this issue. iPad (9th Gen) iPad air (4th Gen) iPhone 15 This issue has not occur on any other devices I have. I tried running the AVFoundation sample code on the Apple Developer site on the above device. The same problem still occurs. [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/capture_setup/avcambarcode_detecting_barcodes_and_faces] Are any additional settings required after OS 26 beta and iOS 26 beta? Or is there some problem on the OS side?

I'm working on an app where a user needs to select a video from their Photos library, and I need to get the original, unmodified HEVC (H.265) data stream to preserve its encoding. The Problem I have confirmed that my source videos are HEVC. I can record a new video with my iPhone 15 Pro Max camera set to "High Efficiency," export the "Unmodified Original" from Photos on my Mac, and verify that the codec is MPEG-H Part2/HEVC (H.265). However, when I select that exact same video in my app using PHPickerViewController, the itemProvider does not list public.hevc as an available type identifier. This forces me to fall back to a generic movie type, which results in the system providing me with a transcoded H.264 version of the video. Here is the debug output from my app after selecting a known HEVC video: ⚠️ 'public.hevc' not found. Falling back to generic movie type (likely H.264). What I've Tried My code explicitly checks for the public.hevc identifier in the registeredTypeIdentifiers array. Since it's not found, my HEVC-specific logic is never triggered. Here is a minimal version of my PHPickerViewControllerDelegate implementation: import UniformTypeIdentifiers // ... inside the Coordinator class ... func picker(_ picker: PHPickerViewController, didFinishPicking results: [PHPickerResult]) { picker.dismiss(animated: true) guard let result = results.first else { return } let itemProvider = result.itemProvider let hevcIdentifier = "public.hevc" let identifiers = itemProvider.registeredTypeIdentifiers print("Available formats from itemProvider: \(identifiers)") if identifiers.contains(hevcIdentifier) { print("✅ HEVC format found, requesting raw data...") itemProvider.loadDataRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: hevcIdentifier) { (data, error) in // ... process H.265 data ... } } else { print("⚠️ 'public.hevc' not found. Falling back to generic movie type (likely H.264).") itemProvider.loadFileRepresentation(forTypeIdentifier: UTType.movie.identifier) { url, error in // ... process H.264 fallback ... } } } My Environment Device: iPhone 15 Pro Max iOS Version: iOS 18.5 Xcode Version: 16.2 My Questions Are there specific conditions (e.g., the video being HDR/Dolby Vision, Cinematic, or stored in iCloud) under which PHPickerViewController's itemProvider would intentionally not offer the public.hevc type identifier, even for an HEVC video? What is the definitive, recommended API sequence to guarantee that I receive the original, unmodified data stream for a video asset, ensuring that no transcoding to H.264 occurs during the process? Any insight into why public.hevc might be missing from the registeredTypeIdentifiers for a known HEVC asset would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

PLATFORM AND VERSION :iOS 18.5 I wanted to bring to your attention a critical issue some of our production users are experiencing with the CoinOut app. Specifically, users are encountering a problem when attempting to capture photos of receipts using the app's customized camera feature. The camera, which utilizes AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer and AVCaptureDevice, occasionally fails to load the preview, resulting in a black screen instead of the expected camera view. This camera blackout issue is significantly impacting the user experience as it prevents them from snapping photos of their receipts, which is a core functionality of the CoinOut app. Any help/suggestion to this issue would be greatly appreciated. STEPS TO REPRODUCE Open the app and click on camera icon. It will display camera to capture photo. Camera shows black for few production user's. class ViewController: UIViewController { @IBOutlet private weak var captureButton: UIButton! private var fillLayer: CAShapeLayer! private var previewLayer : AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer! private var output: AVCapturePhotoOutput! private var device: AVCaptureDevice! private var session : AVCaptureSession! private var highResolutionEnabled: Bool = false private let sessionQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "session queue") override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() setupCamera() customiseUI() } @IBAction func startCamera(sender: UIButton) { didTapTakePhoto() } private func setupCamera() { let session = AVCaptureSession() session.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSession.Preset.high previewLayer = AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer(session: session) output = AVCapturePhotoOutput() device = AVCaptureDevice.default(.builtInWideAngleCamera, for: AVMediaType.video, position: .back) if let device = self.device{ do{ let input = try AVCaptureDeviceInput(device: device) if session.canAddInput(input){ session.addInput(input)} else { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : Session Input addition failed") } if session.canAddOutput(output){ output.isHighResolutionCaptureEnabled = self.highResolutionEnabled session.addOutput(output) } else { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : Session Input high resolution failed") } previewLayer.videoGravity = .resizeAspectFill previewLayer.session = session sessionQueue.async { session.startRunning() } self.session = session self.session.accessibilityElementIsFocused() try device.lockForConfiguration() if device.isWhiteBalanceModeSupported(AVCaptureDevice.WhiteBalanceMode.autoWhiteBalance) { device.whiteBalanceMode = .autoWhiteBalance } else { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : isWhiteBalanceModeSupported no supported") } if device.isWhiteBalanceModeSupported(AVCaptureDevice.WhiteBalanceMode.continuousAutoWhiteBalance) { device.whiteBalanceMode = .continuousAutoWhiteBalance } else { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : isWhiteBalanceModeSupported no supported") } if device.isFocusModeSupported(.continuousAutoFocus) { device.focusMode = .continuousAutoFocus} else if device.isFocusModeSupported(.autoFocus) { device.focusMode = .autoFocus } device.unlockForConfiguration() } catch { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : \(error.localizedDescription)") } } else { print("\(#fileID):\(#function):\(#line) : Device found as nil") } } private func customiseUI() { let path = UIBezierPath(roundedRect: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: self.view.bounds.width, height: self.view.bounds.height), cornerRadius: 0) let rectangleWidth = view.frame.width - (view.frame.width * 0.16) let x = (view.frame.width - rectangleWidth) / 2 let rectangleHeight = view.frame.height - (view.frame.height * 0.16) let y = (view.frame.height - rectangleHeight) / 2 let roundRect = UIBezierPath(roundedRect: CGRect(x: x, y: y, width: rectangleWidth, height: rectangleHeight), byRoundingCorners:.allCorners, cornerRadii: CGSize(width: 0, height: 0)) roundRect.move(to: CGPoint(x: self.view.center.x , y: self.view.center.y)) path.append(roundRect) path.usesEvenOddFillRule = true fillLayer = CAShapeLayer() fillLayer.path = path.cgPath fillLayer.fillRule = .evenOdd fillLayer.opacity = 0.4 previewLayer.addSublayer(fillLayer) previewLayer.frame = view.bounds view.layer.addSublayer(previewLayer) view.bringSubviewToFront(captureButton) } private func didTapTakePhoto() { let settings = self.getSettings(camera: self.device) if device.isAdjustingFocus { do { try device.lockForConfiguration() device.focusMode = .continuousAutoFocus device.unlockForConfiguration() device.addObserver(self, forKeyPath: "adjustingFocus", options: [.new], context: nil) } catch { print(error) } } else { output.capturePhoto(with: settings, delegate: self) } } func getSettings(camera: AVCaptureDevice) -> AVCapturePhotoSettings { var settings = AVCapturePhotoSettings() if let rawFormat = output.availableRawPhotoPixelFormatTypes.first { settings = AVCapturePhotoSettings(rawPixelFormatType: OSType(rawFormat)) } settings.isHighResolutionPhotoEnabled = self.highResolutionEnabled let previewPixelType = settings.availablePreviewPhotoPixelFormatTypes.first! let previewFormat = [kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey as String: previewPixelType] as [String : Any] settings.previewPhotoFormat = previewFormat return settings } } extension ViewController: AVCapturePhotoCaptureDelegate { func photoOutput(_ output: AVCapturePhotoOutput, willCapturePhotoFor resolvedSettings: AVCaptureResolvedPhotoSettings) { AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID(1108) } func photoOutput(_ output: AVCapturePhotoOutput, didFinishProcessingPhoto photo: AVCapturePhoto, error: Error?) { guard let data = photo.fileDataRepresentation() else { return } let image = UIImage(data: data)! showImage(cropped: image) } func showImage(cropped: UIImage) { let vc = self.storyboard?.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "ImagePreviewViewController") as? ImagePreviewViewController vc?.captured = cropped self.present(vc!, animated: true) } }```

I'm capturing video stream from GoPro camera (via UDP MPEG-TS packets) but unable to play in iOS app. can someone provide a source code to decode MPEG-TS data to CMSampleBuffer.

(Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3) 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 Camera & Photos. WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025 Introductory kick-off questions Question 1 Tell us a little about the new AVFoundation Capture APIs we've made available in the new iOS 26 developer preview? Cinematic Capture API (strong/weak focus, tracking focus)(scene monitoring)(simulated aperture)(dog/cat heads/groupIDs) Camera Controls and AirPod Stem Clicks Spatial Audio and Studio Quality AirPod Mics in Camera Lens Smudge Detection Exposure and Focus Rect of Interest Question 2 I built QR code scanning into my app, but on newer iPhones I have to hold the phone very far away from the QR code, otherwise the image is blurry and it doesn't scan. Why is this happening and how can I fix it? Every year, the cameras get better and better as we push the state of the art on iPhone photography and videography. This sometimes results in changes to the characteristics of the lenses. min focus distance newer phones have multiple lenses automatic switching behavior Use virtual device like the builtInDualWide or built in Triple, rather than just the builtInWide Set the videoZoomFactor to 2. You're done. Question 3 Last year, we saw some exciting new APIs introduced in AVFoundation in the health space. With Constant Color photography, developers can take pictures that have constant color regardless of ambient lighting. There are some further advancements this year. Davide, could you tell us about them? constant color photography is mean to remove the "tone mapping" applied to photograph captured with camera app, usually incldsuing artistic intent, and instead try to be a close as possible to the real color of the scene, regardless of the illumination constant color images could be captured in HEIF anf JPEG laste year. this year we are adding Support for the DICOM medical imaging photo format. It is a fomrat used by the health industry to store images related to medical subjects like MRI, skin problems, xray and so on. It's writable and also readable format on all OS26, supported through AVCapturePhotoOutput APIs and through the coregraphics api. for coregrapphics there is a new DICOM entry in the property dictionary which includes all the dicom availbale and defined propertie in a file. finder will also display all those in the info panel (Address why a developer would want to use it) - not for regualr picture taking apps. for those HEIF and JPEG are the preferred delivery format. use dicom if your app produces output that are health related, that you can also share with health providers or your doctors Main session developer questions Question 1 LiDAR vs. Dual Camera depth generation: Which resolution does the LiDAR sensor natively have (iPhone 16 Pro) and when to prefer LiDAR over Dual Camera? Both report formats with output resolutions (we don't advertise sensor resolution) Lidar vs Dual, etc: Lidar: Best for absolute depth, real world scale and computer vision Dual, etc: relative, disparity-based, less power, photo effects Also see: 2022 WWDC session "Discovery advancements in iOS camera capture: Depth, focus and multitasking" Question 2 Can true depth and lidar camera run at 60fps? Lidar can do 30fps (edited) Front true depth can do 60fps. Question 3 What’s the first class way to use PhotoKit to reimplement a high performance photo grid? We’ve been using a LazyVGrid and the photos caching manager, but are never able to hit the holy trinity (60hz, efficient memory footprint, minimal flashes of placeholder/empty cells) use the PHCachingImageManager to get media content delivered before you need to display it specify the size you need for grid sized display set the options PHVideoRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat, PHImageRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat and PHImageRequestOptionsResizeModeFast Question 4 For rending live preview of video stream, Is there performance overhead from using async and Swift UI for image updates vs UIViewRepresentable + AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer.self? AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer is the most efficient display path Use VDO + AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer if you need to modify the image data Swift UI image is optimized for static image content Question 5 Is there a way to configure the AVFoundation BuiltInLiDarDepthCamera mode to provide a depth map as accurate as ARKit at close range? The AVCaptureDepthDataOutput supports filtering that reduces noise and fills in invalid values. Consider using this for smoother depth maps Question 6 Pyramid-based photo editing in core image (such as adobe camera raw highlights and shadows)? First off you may want to look a the builtin filter called CIHighlightShadowAdjust Also the noise reduction in the CIRawFilter uses a pyramid-based algorithm. You can also write your own pyramid-based algorithms by taking an input image: down sample it by two multiply times using imageByApplyingAffineTransform apply additional CIKernels to each downsampled image as needed. use a custom CIKernel to combine the results. Question 7 Is the best way to integrate an in-app camera for a “non-camera” app UIImagePickerController? Yes, UIImagePickerController provides system-provided UI for capturing photos and movies. Question 8 Hello, my question is on Deferred Photo Processing? Say I have a photo capture app that adds a CIFilter to the capture. How can I take advantage of Deferred Photo Processing? Since I don’t know how to detect when the deferred captured photo is ready CIFilter can be called on the final at that point Photo will have to be re-inserted into the Photo library as adjustment Question 9 For shipping photo style assets in the app that need transparency what is the best format to use? JPEG2000? will moving to this save a lot of space comapred to PNG or other options? If you want lossless compression PNG is good and supports unpremutiplied alpha If you want lossy compression HEIF supports premutiplied or unpremutiplied alpha (Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3)

(Note: this is part 2 of a 3 part posting. See Part 1 or Part 3) 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 Camera & Photos. WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025 Question 10 Can we directly integrate auto-capture triggers (e.g., when image is steady or text is detected) using Vision and AVFoundation? Yes apps can use AVCaptureSession's VDO + AVCapturePhotoOutput, run vision on VDO buffers and capture photo when certain scene or text is detected. Just to be careful to run Vision on VDO buffers async so it doesn't cause frame drops. Question 11 What Camera or Photos framework features support working with images from external media, like connected cameras or SD cards? Any best practices? The ImageCaptureCore framework supports camera devices, memory cards, scanners read and write, where supported check out the docs to see how to browse connected devices, folders, files, etc. Question 12 Hi Brad, to follow up on your SwiftUI cautionary note: using AVCaptureVideoPreview inside a UIViewRepresentable, is okay, right? Thanks all for the great info! Yes, this is totally fine. AppKit or UIKit views inside appropriate SwiftUI representables should be equivalent performance Question 13 What’s the “right” way to transition media in my photos app between HDR modes? When I’m in a one-up view, we use HDR, but in other contexts (like thumbnail) we don’t want HDR. Is there a nice way to tone map? There’s a suite of new System Tone Mapper APIs in this years’ OSes CoreImage ImageKit CoreAnimation, CoreGraphics For example: CoreImage: new CISystemToneMap filter. CoreAnimation: layer.preferredDynamicRange = CADynamicRangeConstrainedHigh Using image views (NSImageView/UIImageView/SwiftUI Image/CALayer) support animations on preferredDynamicRange Can go from high to constrained to standard Tone mapping is provided by the system (CISystemToneMap for controllable example) Question 14 What is your recommendation to preprocess and upscale your depth map in order to render a realistic portrait mode image? One way to do this: the CIEdgePreserveUpsample CIFilter can be use to upsample a lower resolution depth map by using a higher resolution RGB image as a guide. Question 15 For buffering frames for later processing from real-time camera output should we prefer a AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer centered approach or AVCaptureVideoDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate centered approach? When would we use each? AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer and AVCaptureVideoDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate are used hand in hand for custom camera preview. For buffering for later processing, ensure you make copies of VDO buffers to not drop frames from the output Question 16 Hello, my question is on Deferred Photo Processing? Say I have a photo capture app that adds a CIFilter to the capture. How can I take advantage of Deferred Photo Processing? Since I don’t know how to detect when the deferred captured photo is ready CIFilter can be called on the final at that point Photo will have to be re-inserted into the Photo library as adjustment Question 17 Is digital zoom (e.g., 1.5x) before taking a photo the same as cropping the photo afterward? digital zoom upscales the image to output dimensions and cropping will yield a smaller output image while digital zoom will crop, it also upscales Question 18 How do you design camera interfaces that work for both casual users and photography enthusiasts? Progressive disclosure: Put the most common controls up front, and make it easy for pros to drill down. Sensible Defaults: Choose defaults that work well for casual users, but allow those defaults to be modified for photography enthusiasts A good philosophy is: Keep the simple things easy, make the hard things possible Question 19 Recent iPhone models introduced macro mode which automatically switch between lenses to take into account of the focal distance difference. Is there official API to implement this, or should I implement them myself using LiDAR values. Using builtInTripleCamera and builtInDualWideCamera will automatically switch to macro when available Question 20 a couple of years ago at WWDC, the option of replacing a camera with a virtual camera was mentioned. How does one do that - make the “physical” camera effectively disappear, so only the virtual camera is accessible to the user? You can't prevent the built-in camera from being available to the user Question 21 Can developers now integrate custom Core ML models with Vision for on-device photo analysis more seamlessly? Yes they can, use CoreMLRequest , provide their model container Been supported for a while (iOS 18/macOS 15) For more details go to Machine Learning & AI group lab Thursday use smaller images for better performance Question 22 What would you recommend for capture of the new immersive and spatial formats? To capture Spatial Video use AVCaptureMovieFileOutput’s spatialVideoCaptureEnabled property Not all device formats support spatial capture, check AVCaptureDevice.activeFormat.spatialVideoCaptureSupported See WWDC 2024 talk “Build compelling spatial photo and video experiences” for more details Question 23 You mentioned JPEG-XL. What is the current status of support on iOS and macOS for encoding and decoding? For decoding, we support JPEG-XL files in all our OSes, regular SDR files, as well as ISO HDR files. For encoding, we only support JPEG-XL for ProRAW DNG capture in the Camera app or via third-party AVFoundation APIs. If you have any requests for improvement or new features related to JPEG-XL, please file a Feedback request using the Feedback Assistant. (Note: this is part 2 of a 3 part posting. See Part 1 or Part 3)