When iphone duo opens and closes, how does the camera automatically decide which camera to use, and what new possibilities does this create for users?

I build Lumecast, a live-streaming app (custom AVCapture pipeline feeding WebRTC). Three questions:   1. Does iPhone Duo support AVCaptureMultiCamSession — specifically front + rear simultaneously? Our co-casting feature would let a solo host fill two panes with their face and what they're looking at. How should a continuous capture session (live broadcast, can't pause) respond to camera direction changes as the device opens and closes? Is there a recommended pattern for swapping to the Virtual Front Camera mid-session without a visible gap for viewers?  3. Which cameras are available to third-party apps in each posture (folded / half-open / fully open), and does availability change at a specific hinge state? Goal: a host folds or unfolds mid-broadcast and their audience never sees a dropped frame.

is AVCaptureMultiCamSession supported on iPhone Duo — specifically streaming two cameras that face opposite directions simultaneously (e.g. .builtInInnerUltraWideCamera + .builtInOuterUltraWideCamera, or the Virtual Front Camera plus a backward-facing camera)? I noticed the article recommends single-input reconfiguration over multi-cam; is that a performance recommendation, or is opposite-direction multi-cam unavailable on this device? Our use case is a live co-cast where one host fills two video panes: their face and what they're looking at.

According to Apple's press release (https://www.apple.com/pt/newsroom/2026/09/apple-debuts-iphone-18-pro-and-iphone-18-pro-max/): Variable aperture also provides more control for creative pros by giving them the ability to manually adjust any of the four aperture settings in the Camera app, and an API is available to developers for even more control across the aperture range in their apps. Can a DTS engineer specify the quoted API please? I can't see it anywhere in the documentation yet. What does it mean "even more control across the aperture range"? Will it be possible to set the aperture in a 0.0-1.0 range?

Hi, experiencing an issue with Apple Music syncing in our app. Apple Music data hasn’t been syncing for a while. We’ve investigated the issue on our side and haven’t found anything that could explain it, so we’d like to check whether there are any known issues or recent changes affecting Apple Music API data. Could someone from the Apple Music/MusicKit team help us investigate this? We can provide affected user examples, timestamps, API responses, and any other information needed.

Team, I am trying to start PictureInPicture for my video from custom player as mentioned in the following link, but I am getting an error Steps: Created a player using AVPlayer. Initiated AVPictureInPictureController with AVPlayerLayer Added observer on PIP button enable status When PIP button is tapped executed pipController.startPictureInPicture() statement. PIP is not getting started & getting following error Project created in Xcode11 & currently using Xcode13.2 Error Domain=AVKitErrorDomain Code=-1001 "Failed to start picture in picture." UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Failed to start picture in picture., NSLocalizedFailureReason=The UIScene for the content source has an activation state other than UISceneActivationStateForegroundActive, which is not allowed.} I didn't get any solutions online, plz help me on this issue. FYI: PIP button/mode is working if I use AVPlayerViewController(with default playerItem buttons) instead of AVPlayer & AVPictureInPictureController with custom controls Thanks in advance. Adopting Picture in Picture in a Custom Player

Hi everyone, I'm building Sidetick, a concert ticketing and cultural discovery platform. I have an active Apple Developer Program account with MusicKit access. I want to implement the following flow and need to know if it complies with the MusicKit License Agreement: User authenticates via MusicKit (explicit OAuth consent) We read their heavy-rotation and library/artists in memory We calculate a fan affinity score per artist (e.g. "480 XP with Angèle") — entirely in-memory, never written to our DB We show the user: "We found these artists — which ones do you want to follow on Sidetick?" User explicitly picks their favorites ALL Apple Music API data is immediately deleted from our systems What we store is only the user's Sidetick declaration: {artist: "Angèle", xp: 480} — no Apple Music raw data retained After this, ALL gamification (fan ranking, ticket priority, rewards) is based exclusively on Sidetick first-party actions (ticket purchases, attended concerts, referrals) — zero Apple Music data involved. The intent: MusicKit is used as a one-time discovery bootstrap to help users identify which artists to follow on Sidetick. Apple Music data is never stored, never shared with third parties, never used for advertising. My questions: Is this use case compatible with the MusicKit License Agreement? Is storing the calculated XP score (after deleting the source Apple Music data) considered retaining Apple Music data? Is there a specific clause we should be careful about? Thanks in advance — any Apple engineer or experienced MusicKit dev input is very welcome. =D

We are building an iOS video-editing companion workflow. An iPhone 17 Pro (USB-C) is the editor/master; an iPhone 14 Pro Max (Lightning) displays its continuous frame-by-frame live preview. The companion must follow playback, pause, seeks, and edits. It does not use a local copy of the media. Our prototype captures composed AVPlayer output with AVPlayerItemVideoOutput, encodes H.264 in real time with VideoToolbox, sends samples through an MCSession stream, and renders them with AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer. We want the best public, App Store-compatible transport for high quality, low latency, adaptive resolution, and reliable recovery. Can an ordinary iOS app send arbitrary stream or IP data directly between these two iPhones over a USB-C-to-Lightning cable? If not, is wired Ethernet via supported adapters and a common network the supported wired option? What are the discovery/routing constraints? For wireless peer-to-peer video on current iOS, should we prefer Network framework with Wi-Fi Aware where available, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, or another transport over MultipeerConnectivity? Can Network framework prefer a wired Ethernet interface and switch paths without losing the editing session? For a live editing preview, which transport and codec patterns keep latency bounded while preserving frame order and recovering promptly after loss or a seek? Are QUIC streams/datagrams appropriate? What receiver feedback should drive bitrate or resolution changes and keyframe requests? Are there public examples or documentation specifically for live video between two iPhones with this USB-C/Lightning pairing? We cannot share the full Xcode project publicly, but can create a minimal reproducible example if needed. We would appreciate guidance based on public APIs and supported hardware paths.

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?

I am using AVPlayer, but I am unable to retrieve PCM data from .m3u8 streams via the AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutput API in iOS 27 beta. I have tried both the Objective-C and Swift APIs: the Objective-C delegate methods are not being called, and the Swift methods nextAvailableSampleBuffer() and nextSampleBuffer() are returning no data.

Hi, I'm trying to do some realtime audio processing on audio served from an HLS stream (i.e. an AVPlayer created using an M3U HTTP URL). And I find that new APIs(AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutput) are available in iOS 27.0 to achieve it. However, I failed to get the available data via the AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutputDelegate. And I found some error in the system log: I create AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutput and set the delegate after receiving the AVPlayerItemStatusReadyToPlay event. And here's my code: @interface OCAudioSamplebuffer () <AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutputDelegate> @property (nonatomic, strong) AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutput *bufferOutput; @property (nonatomic, strong) dispatch_queue_t bufferOutputQueue; @property (nonatomic, strong) AVPlayerItem *playerItem; @end - (void)playItem:(AVPlayerItem *)item { if (@available(iOS 27, *)) { AVAudioSession *audioSession = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance]; if([NSThread mainThread]){ [audioSession setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback withOptions:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:nil]; [audioSession setActive:YES error:nil]; }else{ dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{ [audioSession setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback withOptions:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:nil]; [audioSession setActive:YES error:nil]; }); } AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutputAudioConfiguration *cfg = [[AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutputAudioConfiguration alloc] init]; CMFormatDescriptionRef formatDescription = [self createPCMFormatDescriptionWithSampleRate:44100.0 channels:2 isFloat:YES]; cfg.requestedAudioFormat = formatDescription; if (formatDescription) { NSLog(@"create PCM Format Description success"); CFRelease(formatDescription); } else { NSLog(@"fail to create PCM Format Description"); } self.bufferOutput = [[AVPlayerItemSampleBufferOutput alloc] initWithConfiguration:cfg]; NSLog(@"create buffer success, PCM Format Description%@---,%@", cfg.requestedAudioFormat, formatDescription); self.bufferOutputQueue = dispatch_queue_create("audioSamplebufferQueue", DISPATCH_QUEUE_CONCURRENT); [self.bufferOutput setDelegate:self queue:self.bufferOutputQueue]; [item addOutput:self.bufferOutput]; self.playerItem = item; } else { // Fallback on earlier versions } } Any help. Thank you

I have a product that relies on the Apple Music API's "recently played tracks" endpoint. Recently, a few users are reporting that there are songs missing from their history. I was able to observe this myself—the issue corrected itself after re-authenticating with Apple Music, but unfortunately for at least one user this is not helping in their case. What's odd is that there is some inconsistency about what shows in the recently played tracks endpoint. Some examples My own account: ✅ Music from my playlists ✅ Albums and singles ✅ Apple editorial playlists ❌ Playlists created by other users User 1: ❌ Music from their playlists ✅ Albums and singles ❌ Apple editorial playlists ❌ Playlists created by other users In most cases, all four of these would appear in the recent tracks API. What could cause these tracks to be missing from the listening history endpoint? Listening history is already enabled for the devices they're using, but the songs are appearing inconsistently.

tl;dr how can I get raw YUV in a Metal fragment shader from a VideoToolbox 10-bit/BT.2020 HEVC stream without any extra/secret format conversions? With VideoToolbox and 10-bit HEVC, I've found that it defaults to CVPixelBuffers w/ formats kCVPixelFormatType_Lossless_420YpCbCr10PackedBiPlanarFullRange or kCVPixelFormatType_Lossy_420YpCbCr10PackedBiPlanarFullRange. To mitigate this, I have the following snippet of code to my application: // We need our pixels unpacked for 10-bit so that the Metal textures actually work var pixelFormat:OSType? = nil let bpc = getBpcForVideoFormat(videoFormat!) let isFullRange = getIsFullRangeForVideoFormat(videoFormat!) // TODO: figure out how to check for 422/444, CVImageBufferChromaLocationBottomField? if bpc == 10 { pixelFormat = isFullRange ? kCVPixelFormatType_420YpCbCr10BiPlanarFullRange : kCVPixelFormatType_420YpCbCr10BiPlanarVideoRange } let videoDecoderSpecification:[NSString: AnyObject] = [kVTVideoDecoderSpecification_EnableHardwareAcceleratedVideoDecoder:kCFBooleanTrue] var destinationImageBufferAttributes:[NSString: AnyObject] = [kCVPixelBufferMetalCompatibilityKey: true as NSNumber, kCVPixelBufferPoolMinimumBufferCountKey: 3 as NSNumber] if pixelFormat != nil { destinationImageBufferAttributes[kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey] = pixelFormat! as NSNumber } var decompressionSession:VTDecompressionSession? = nil err = VTDecompressionSessionCreate(allocator: nil, formatDescription: videoFormat!, decoderSpecification: videoDecoderSpecification as CFDictionary, imageBufferAttributes: destinationImageBufferAttributes as CFDictionary, outputCallback: nil, decompressionSessionOut: &decompressionSession) In short, I need kCVPixelFormatType_420YpCbCr10BiPlanar so that I have a straightforward MTLPixelFormat.r16Unorm/MTLPixelFormat.rg16Unorm texture binding for Y/CbCr. Metal, seemingly, has no direct pixel format for 420YpCbCr10PackedBiPlanar. I'd also rather not use any color conversion in VideoToolbox, in order to save on processing (and to ensure that the color transforms/transfer characteristics match between streamer/client, since I also have a custom transfer characteristic to mitigate blocking in dark scenes). However, I noticed that in visionOS 2, the CVPixelBuffer I receive is no longer a compressed render target (likely a bug), which caused GPU texture read bandwidth to skyrocket from 2GiB/s to 30GiB/s. More importantly, this implies that VideoToolbox may in fact be doing an extra color conversion step, wasting memory bandwidth. Does Metal actually have no way to handle 420YpCbCr10PackedBiPlanar? Are there any examples for reading 10-bit HDR HEVC buffers directly with Metal?

I'm implementing the new NowPlaying framework's remote-session push-to-start flow (per Publishing remote media sessions) to show a Sonos-like remote speaker's playback on the Lock Screen/Control Center without requiring my app to be running. The docs say: Your server can start, update, or end sessions when your app isn't running. Use this approach when playback starts from a remote device without someone opening your app. That section never mentions requestToBecomeSystemPrimary() — that's only documented under "Start and update sessions from your app," with a note that it's a no-op unless the app is foregrounded. In my testing, though, a session created purely via a push-to-start "event":"start" push never shows up anywhere in system UI (not Control Center, not the Lock Screen) until I open the app at least once. The mechanism itself works correctly — RemoteMediaSessionExtension.session(_:) fires reliably, decodes the attributes correctly, and returns a valid RemoteMediaSessionRepresentable (confirmed via on-device logging: no errors, clean construction every time, across dozens of test pushes). It just isn't surfaced. To rule out anything on my end, I've tested: Sending via my own server (correct apns-topic/apns-push-type headers, confirmed working via HTTP/2 200 and correct decode) Sending via the Push Notifications Console directly, with Environment explicitly set to Production (my push-to-start token only validates against production, matching the known dev-signed-token-provisions-against-production quirk) A hand-built, minimal, fully valid payload for a completely fresh, never-before-registered session id Every combination produces a correctly-constructed session that's invisible until the app opens — at which point my own app code (unrelated to the push) independently constructs and promotes its own session via RemoteMediaSession.start() + requestToBecomeSystemPrimary() in the foreground. Has anyone gotten a push-to-start session to actually appear on the Lock Screen/Control Center without opening the app first? Is there an additional step beyond what's in the current docs (some other registration, entitlement, or timing requirement) that's needed for that, or is this expected behavior right now and the docs are ahead of the implementation? FB24876585 filed on Feedback Assistant with app logs attached.

Hello, Apple recently announced that M6 and M5 Pro are featuring genlock support through USB-C to enables precise synchronization between a display and camera. Regarding displays : would this be possible to frame-lock several displays with this feature ? I mean outputting through several Thunderbolt and synchronizing every output so they works exactly at the same frequency and show exactly the same frame at the same time. If so, how would this work ? Is there some documentation about genlocking displays ? Thank you for your help.

On iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 27.2 beta (24B5084k), Music.app hangs and is watchdog-terminated when opening the Library tab, but only with Sync Library enabled. to reproduce: 1. Settings › Apps › Music › Sync Library OFF — app works normally. 2. Enable Sync Library, let it finish syncing. 3. Open Music and navigate to the Library tab. Result: The app freezes immediately and is terminated. Home, Radio and Search all play normally with Sync Library on — the hang is isolated to the Library tab. The stackshot from Analytics Data shows multiple threads blocked on a single thread, including com.apple.SwiftUI.AsyncRenderer, with the watchdog reporting "Failed to terminate gracefully after 5.0s". No VPN, no automatic downloads, no local files. The same Apple Music account works normally on iPadOS 26 and on Apple Music for Windows. 100% reproducible. Filed as FB24865181. Has anyone else hit this? If so, does your Music- analytics log show the same blocked-thread signature?

The iOS 26 sample below speaks well on iPhone/iPad devices and the iOS simulator. But it does not speak on "Mac (Designed for iPad)", with a voice downloaded via the macOS settings. Instead it issues this warning : Invalid maui voice identifier com.apple.voice.enhanced.en-US.Samantha How to make an iOS app speak on "Mac (Designed for iPad)", with a downloaded voice ? Note : I use iOS 26.5.2 and macOS 26.5.2. I use voices that can be found in System Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > System voice. I have checked that "Samantha (Enhanced)" is the "System voice" in the macOS settings. I have checked that the same issue occurs with other voices and other languages. There is no such issue for a voice that never needs to be downloaded. import AVFAudio import SwiftUI @main struct SampleApp: App { var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { SampleView() } } } struct SampleView: View { private var synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer() var body: some View { Button("Speak", action: speak) } private func speak() { let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: "I speak English.") utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "en") self.synthesizer.speak(utterance) } }

On iOS, SCStreamConfiguration.excludesCurrentProcessAudio appears to do nothing. Audio produced by our own process is captured at full level, so there is currently no way to capture device audio while excluding what our app is playing. Measurement (deterministic probe, 2026-08-08): Our app plays a 1 kHz tone at -4.9 dBFS RMS from its own process while capturing device audio with SCStreamConfiguration.capturesAudio = true and excludesCurrentProcessAudio = true. The configuration in force is read back from the stream and logged, so we know the flag is actually set. The captured audio contained our own tone at -4.9 dBFS peak. Separation = 0.0 dB. 1,573 audio sample buffers analyzed over 31.5 s (16 kHz mono, 50 buffers/s), zero analysis failures, and the run was reproduced twice about 3 hours apart with byte-identical verdicts. Environment for that run: iPhone 16 Pro (iPhone17,1), iOS 27.0, built with Xcode 27 beta 4 (27A5228h) against the iOS 27 SDK, installed directly from Xcode. Still reproducing on the current build: on iOS 27.0 (24A5418b) our shipping capture path still receives our own playback. In production we now have to cancel it ourselves - we align our playback buffer to the captured stream by cross-correlation and subtract it. The correlation between the captured signal and our own playback sits at |r| = 0.65-0.85 in the affected segments, i.e. the capture is dominated by a copy of our own output, exactly what excludesCurrentProcessAudio is supposed to remove. Doing this subtraction in-process costs real CPU and only works while we can hold a delay lock. Why this is blocking: RPSampleBufferType.audioApp is deprecated as of iOS 27 and the documentation points to ScreenCaptureKit as the replacement. With excludesCurrentProcessAudio non-functional there is no supported path on iOS to capture device audio while excluding one's own process. Our app is a real-time dubbing app - it captures foreign-language audio, transcribes it, and plays back a translated voice - so our own output re-entering the capture is fed straight back into transcription and corrupts the session. My questions: (1) Is excludesCurrentProcessAudio expected to be functional on iOS 27, or is it macOS-only in practice? The documentation does not mark it as unavailable on iOS. (2) If it is expected to work, is there anything the app must do besides setting it on the SCStreamConfiguration used to start the stream? (3) If it is not going to work on iOS, what is the supported way to exclude the current process's audio from a ScreenCaptureKit capture, now that RPSampleBufferType.audioApp is deprecated? Filed as FB24170972 on 2026-08-08, with the full JSON event logs from both probe runs attached. There has been no response on the Feedback, which is why I am raising it here.

For the new IOS 27.0 system on iPhone 18 pro demo, the camera app have a new feature to let users adjust camera focusing from AF to MF. This feature does not require the newest camera module. Therefore, all previous models should be able to have this feature, especially useful via camera control slider. How to get attention of apple camera software development team to work on this...

Since updating to the latest beta version on my iPhone, I cannot connect to the treadmill via AirPlay screen mirroring. It fails to search for the device or stucks on a loading screen.