Explore the integration of media technologies within your app. Discuss working with audio, video, camera, and other media functionalities.

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Playing Apple Fairplay encrypted content on iOS 26
For iOS17 we've had no problem playing Apple Fairplay encrypted content with keys delivered from our key server running on FairPlay Streaming Server SDK 5.1 and subsequently FairPlay Streaming Server SDK 26. It's built and deployed using Xcode Version 26.1.1 (17B100) with no changes to the code and - as expected - the content continued to be successfully decrypted and played (so far so good). However, as soon as a device was updated to iOS26, that device would no longer play the encrypted content. Devices remaining on iOS17 continue to work normally and the debugging logs are a sanity-check that proves that. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Here's the code (you should be able to drop it into a fresh iOS Xcode project and provide a server url, content url and certificate).
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Dec ’25
Always audio from latest connected external USB mic
Hello! I've two mics connected to a USB-hub. The USB-hub is then connected to my iPad. Both mics are part of the audio session's list of available inputs. The problem is that regardless of which mic I select in my app (using setPreferredInput() on the audio session), the audio keeps coming from the mic that was last connected to the USB-hub. Anyone that knows if this is a limitation in iPadOS/iOS?
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Jul ’25
When does AVPlayer exclude _HLS_part query param in LL-HLS requests?
Hello, I'm investigating an issue with LL-HLS playback using AVPlayer, specifically during DVR Live seeking (seeking to a past time). I noticed that in certain seeking scenarios, AVPlayer sends a Blocking Playlist Reload request that includes the _HLS_msn parameter but is missing the _HLS_part parameter. While I understand this is compliant with the HLS spec, I would like to know the specific criteria AVPlayer uses to decide when to drop the _HLS_part parameter. Does AVPlayer intentionally omit the part info when it determines that loading a specific partial segment is unnecessary during a seek operation? Clarification on this behavior would help us greatly in debugging our stream delivery. Thanks in advance.
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Dec ’25
Making DataScannerViewController work in the Simulator
Before you post —Camera doesn't work on the Simulator— that's no longer true. I've made a solution that makes the Simulator believe there's an actual hardware device connected, allowing users to stream the macOS camera to the iOS Simulator (see for more info RocketSim's documentation: https://docs.rocketsim.app/features/hzQMSrSga7BGWvxdNVdwYs/simulator-camera-support/58tQ5jvevLNSnyUEA7VgAv) Now, it works for VNDocumentCameraViewController, but when I try opening DataScannerViewController, I directly run into: Failed to start scanning: The operation couldn’t be completed. (VisionKit.DataScannerViewController.ScanningUnavailable error 0.) My question: How does this view controller determine whether scanning is available? Is there a certain capability the available AVCaptureDevice's need to support maybe? Any direction would be helpful for me to make this work for developers, making them build apps faster!
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Jul ’25
Dockkit custom tracking does not work on iOS18.3
Hi all, I'm using Apple Sample Code below to create application using dockkit. "Controlling a DockKit accessory using your camera app" https://developer.apple.com/documentation/dockkit/controlling-a-dockkit-accessory-using-your-camera-app?changes=_8 I used vision hand recognition and put the observation data to dockAccessory.track, but Belkin or Insta360 devices never move on iPhone 16 Pro Max with iOS 18.3. If I use other functions like face search (system tracking) in the app, those work ok. I used Belkin and Insta360 Flow 2 Pro to reproduce the problem. My friend is also saying that the custom tracking feature was working fine on the OS 18 beta, but on recent iOS 18.3 that feature does not work. If I can get the iOS 18.0 beta then we can test that feature. But I cannot revert my iOS from 18.3 to the iOS 18.0 Beta. Regards, TO
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Dec ’25
Attaching color properties to CVPixelBufferRef
I believe this should work: CFMutableDictionaryRef attrs = CFDictionaryCreateMutable(kCFAllocatorDefault, 0, &kCFTypeDictionaryKeyCallBacks, &kCFTypeDictionaryValueCallBacks); CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey, kCVImageBufferColorPrimaries_ITU_R_709_2); CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey, kCVImageBufferTransferFunction_ITU_R_709_2); CFDictionaryAddValue(attrs, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrix_ITU_R_709_2); CVPixelBufferRef pixelBuffer = NULL; CVPixelBufferCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, width, height, kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB, attrs, &pixelBuffer); assert(CFDictionaryGetCount(CVBufferGetAttachments(pixelBuffer, kCVAttachmentMode_ShouldPropagate)) > 0); But that last assert fails, so it appears the color info does not get attached. kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey and the others are not one of the keys listed under BufferAttributeKeys, but I think they're supposed to be allowed because they're listed by CMVideoFormatDescriptionGetExtensionKeysCommonWithImageBuffers(). I'm hoping that putting the color matrix info in there will control how AVAssetWriter converts the RGB to YCbCr.
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Nov ’25
[AVPlayerItemVideoOutput initWithPixelBufferAttributes:] output attributes setting not work
My app want Converting iphone12 HDR Video to SDR,to edit。 follow the doc Apple-HDR-Convert. My code setting the pixBuffAttributes        [pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)(kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrix_ITU_R_709_2) forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey];       [pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)(kCVImageBufferColorPrimaries_ITU_R_709_2) forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey];       [pixBuffAttributes setObject:(id)kCVImageBufferTransferFunction_ITU_R_709_2 forKey:(id)kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey];       playerItemOutput = [[AVPlayerItemVideoOutput alloc] initWithPixelBufferAttributes:pixBuffAttributes]; but I get the playerItemOutput's output buffer   CFTypeRef colorAttachments = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferYCbCrMatrixKey, NULL);     CFTypeRef colorPrimaries = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferColorPrimariesKey, NULL);     CFTypeRef colorTransFunc = CVBufferGetAttachment(pixelBuffer, kCVImageBufferTransferFunctionKey, NULL);      NSLog(@"colorAttachments = %@", colorAttachments);     NSLog(@"colorPrimaries = %@", colorPrimaries);     NSLog(@"colorTransFunc = %@", colorTransFunc); log output: colorAttachments = ITU_R_2020 colorPrimaries = ITU_R_2020 colorTransFunc = ITU_R_2100_HLG pixBuffAttributes setting output format invalid,please help!
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Nov ’25
Graceful shutdown during background audio playback.
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
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Jun ’25
Creating RTP-MIDI Sessions via MIDINetworkSession C API (dlopen/dlsym) on macOS 15?
I’m an amateur developer working on a free utility for composers/producers, for which the macOS release needs to create and name RTP-MIDI sessions in Audio MIDI Setup from the command line (so I can ship a small C helper instead of telling users to click through the UI). Here’s what I’ve tried so far, without luck: • Plist hacks: Injecting entries into ~/Library/Audio/MIDI Configurations/*.mcfg works when AMS is closed, but AMS immediately locks and reverts my changes when it’s open. • CoreMIDI C API: I can create virtual ports with MIDISourceCreate, but attempting MIDIObjectGetDataProperty on the apple.midirtp.session plugin always returns err –10836. • Obj-C & Swift: Loading MIDINetworkSession and calling defaultSession, init, setNetworkName: and setting enabled = YES doesn’t produce a new session object in the Network panel. • dlopen/dlsym: I extracted the real CoreMIDI binary out of the dyld shared cache and tried binding _MIDINetworkSessionCreate, _SetName, _SetEnabled, etc., but all the symbols come back null or my tool segfaults. • Plugin registration: I’ve pulled the factory UUID (70C9C5EA-7C65-11D8-B317-000393A34B5A) from /System/Library/Extensions/AppleMIDIRTPDriver.plugin/Contents/Info.plist and called CFPlugInRegisterFactories, but it still never exposes the session-creation calls. At this point I’m convinced I’m either loading the wrong binary or missing one critical step in registering the RTP-MIDI plugin’s private API. Can anyone point me to: The exact path of the dylib or bundle that actually exports the MIDINetworkSessionCreate/MIDINetworkSessionSetName/MIDINetworkSessionSetEnabled symbols? A minimal working snippet (C or Obj-C) that reliably creates and names a Network-MIDI session? Any pointers, sample code, or even ideas about where Apple hides this functionality on macOS 15 would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!
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Jun ’25
How to consume video from an RTSP service?
Hi,It seems like it's pretty easy to consume HTTP Live Streaming content in an iOS app. Unfortunately, I need to consume media from an RTSP server. It seems to me that this is a very similar thing, and that all of the underpinnings for doing it ought to be present in iOS, but I'm having a devil of a time figuring out how to make it work without doing a lot of programming.For starters, I know that there are web-based services that can consume an RTSP stream and rebroadcast it as an HTTP Live Stream that can be easily consumed by the media players in iOS. This won't work for me because my application needs to function in an environment where there is no internet access (it's on a private Wifi network where the only other thing on the network is the device that is serving the RTSP stream).Having read everything I can get my hands on and exploring third-party and open-source solutions, I've compiled the following list of ideas:1. Using an iOS build of the open-source ffmpeg library, which supports RTSP, I've come up with a test app that can receive the RTSP packets, decode them, create UIImages out of the frames, and display those frames on-screen. This provides a crude player, but performance is poor, most likely because ffmpeg can't take advantage of any hardware acceleration. It also doesn't provide me with any way to integrate the video stream into AVFoundation, so I'm on my own as far as saving the stream to a file, transcoding it, etc.2. I know that the AVURLAsset class doesn't directly support the RTSP scheme. Since I have access to the undecoded RTSP packets via ffmpeg, I've thought it should be possible to implement RTSP support myself via a custom NSURLProtocol, essentially fooling AVFoundation into reading those packets as if they originated in a file. I'm not sure if this would work, since the raw packets coming from the RTSP server might lack the headers that would otherwise be present in data being read from a file. I'm not even sure if AVFoundation would recognize my custom protocol.3. If a protocol doesn't work, I've considered that I might be able to implement my own local HTTP Live Streaming server that converts the RTSP packets into an HTTP stream that the media players can read. This sounds like a terribly convoluted solution to the problem, at best, and very difficult at worst.4. Going back to solution (1), if I could speed up the decoding by using some iOS CoreVideo function instead of ffmpeg, this solution might be okay. However, I can't find any documentation for CoreVideo on iOS (Apple only documents it for OS X).5. I'm certainly willing to license a third-party solution if it works well and provides good performance. Unfortunately, everything I've found so far is pretty crummy and mostly just leverages ffmpeg and/or VLC. What is most disappointing to me is that nobody seems to be able or willing to provide a solution that neatly integrates with AVFoundation. I really want to make my RTSP stream available as an AVAsset so I can use it with AVFoundation players and other classes -- I don't want to build an app that relies on custom third-party code for everything.Any ideas, tips, advice would be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Frank
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Oct ’25
Apple Music / MusicKit and Simulator
It's been an ask for a few years and I'm wondering if there are any plans, or whether the '26 SDKs/Tools allow Apple Music to work in the simulator? I develop for the Vision Pro so the usual 'fix' of running on the device is a bit of a hard ask. At the very least a small sample library that works in the simulator would be welcome (similar to how photos works) Cheers
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Jul ’25
PhotosPickerItem.itemIdentifier always nil
I'm using the SwiftUI Photos Picker to select videos from the users Photos library and then opening the video using the PhotosPickerItem. I'm looking for a way to allow the user to open the same video on their other devices as the app uses SwiftData and CloudKit to provide access to a recently watched list of videos. The URL from the PhotosPickerItem appears to be device specific and so I was looking to see if I can use the itemIdentifier and then the init that takes the itemIdentifier to create the PhotosPickerItem on the other devices. The itemIdentifier however is always nil and so wouldn't be able to be used in this way. Is there an alternative approach whereby the users can open a video using a PhotosPickerItem and that item would be viewable on their other devices with an item identifier or a URL that is device agnostic. This approach should also not involve copying the video into other storage as it would simply expand the use of the users iCloud storage, providing a less than ideal user experience. If the user has opened the video from their Photos library, there should be a way to allow the same user (e.g. same Apple ID), to use the same app on another device to open the video again.
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Nov ’25
PDF Page Content Swapping on iOS 26
Dear Apple Developer Team, On iOS 26, the contents of PDF pages appear to be swapped. Could you please advise if there is a workaround or a planned fix for this issue? Steps to Reproduce: Download the attached PDF on iOS 26. Open the PDF in the Files app. Tap the PDF to view it in Quick Look. Navigate to page 5. Expected Result: The page number displayed at the bottom should be 5. Actual Result: The page number displayed at the bottom is 4. Issue: This is not limited to page 5—multiple page contents appear to be swapped. I have also submitted feedback via Feedback Assistant (FB20743531) on October 20. Best regards, Yoshihito Suezawa
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Nov ’25
iOS Speech Error on Mobile Simulator (Error fetching voices)
I'm writing a simple app for iOS and I'd like to be able to do some text to speech in it. I have a basic audio manager class with a "speak" function: import Foundation import AVFoundation class AudioManager { static let shared = AudioManager() var audioPlayer: AVAudioPlayer? var isPlaying: Bool { return audioPlayer?.isPlaying ?? false } var playbackPosition: TimeInterval = 0 func playSound(named name: String) { guard let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: name, withExtension: "mp3") else { print("Sound file not found") return } do { if audioPlayer == nil || !isPlaying { audioPlayer = try AVAudioPlayer(contentsOf: url) audioPlayer?.currentTime = playbackPosition audioPlayer?.prepareToPlay() audioPlayer?.play() } else { print("Sound is already playing") } } catch { print("Error playing sound: \(error.localizedDescription)") } } func stopSound() { if let player = audioPlayer { playbackPosition = player.currentTime player.stop() } } func speak(text: String) { let synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer() let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: text) utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "en-GB") synthesizer.speak(utterance) } } And my app shows text in a ScrollView: ScrollView { Text(self.description) .padding() .foregroundColor(.black) .font(.headline) .background(Color.gray.opacity(0)) }.onAppear { AudioManager.shared.speak(text: self.description) } However, the text doesn't get read out (in the simulator). I see some output in the console: Error fetching voices: Swift.DecodingError.dataCorrupted(Swift.DecodingError.Context(codingPath: [], debugDescription: "Invalid container metadata for _UnkeyedDecodingContainer, found keyedGraphEncodingNodeID", underlyingError: nil)). Using fallback voices. I'm probably doing something wrong here, but not sure what.
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Dec ’25
Issues with "AVMetricEventStreamPublisher Discover Media Performance Metrics in AVFoundation" Example Code
Hi everyone! I’ve been working with AVFoundation and trying to use the AVMetricEventStreamPublisher to discover media performance metrics, as described in the Apple documentation. https://developer.apple.com/cn/videos/play/wwdc2024/10113/?time=508 However, when following the example code, I’m not getting the expected results. The performance metrics for both audio and video don’t seem to be captured properly. Has anyone successfully used this example code? If so, could you share your experience or any solutions you’ve found? Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Ps. the example code: AVPlayerItem *item = ... AVMetricEventStream *eventStream = [AVMetricEventStream eventStream]; id subscriber = [[MyMetricSubscriber alloc] init]; [eventStream setSubscriber:subscriber queue:mySerialQueue] [eventStream subscribeToMetricEvent:[AVMetricPlayerItemLikelyToKeepUpEvent class]]; [eventStream subscribeToMetricEvent:[AVMetricPlayerItemPlaybackSummaryEvent class]]; [eventStream addPublisher:item];
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Nov ’25
Uploading PhotoKit Resources in the Background
The introduction of PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension is a welcome addition in iOS 26.1. I wonder however, how to attach a debugger and actually get the system to call the process() method of the extension. I tried to run the extension both inside photos app (and also the main app for testing), but when I take a photo or add photos to the library (saving), the process() method does never get called. Any hints would be appreciated to debug the PHBackgroundResourceUploadExtension during development.
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Nov ’25
iOS 26.0 (23A5276f) - Bluetooth Call Audio Broken (AirPods + Car)
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.
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Jun ’25
AVAssetDownloadConfiguration: How many video variants are actually downloaded when multiple variants exist in the HLS master playlist?
Hi, I’m trying to better understand how AVAssetDownloadConfiguration selects video variants when downloading HLS content for offline playback. Suppose I have an HLS master playlist (.m3u8) that contains several video variants defined with #EXT-X-STREAM-INF. For example, the master playlist may contain multiple video streams like this: Same resolution, different BANDWIDTH Or different resolutions (for example 720p, 1080p, etc.) My question is: How many video variants are actually downloaded when using AVAssetDownloadConfiguration without specifying any variantQualifiers? In other words: If the master playlist contains multiple video variants, will the download task fetch only one variant, or multiple variants? Does the behavior differ depending on whether the variants differ only by BANDWIDTH or also by RESOLUTION? What I observed in testing In my tests, I always end up with only one video variant downloaded, specifically the one with the highest BANDWIDTH parameter. In the m3u8 files I tested, all video variants had identical parameters (resolution, codec, frame rate, etc.) and differed only by the BANDWIDTH attribute in the master playlist. However, when inspecting the downloaded .movpkg, I noticed something interesting in boot.xml. It lists two video streams: one with complete="true" (the one with highest bandwidth) another with complete="no" (the one with lowest bandwidth) I actually had 3 video streams listed in m3u8, but the one with middle bandwidth wasn't listed in boot.xml file at all. There are also additional streams for audio and subtitles in boot.xml file. This made me wonder whether the system initially attempts to download another video variant (possibly a lower bitrate one), but then switches to the highest-quality variant and only completes that one. Additional question about variantQualifiers If I provide a predicate such as: NSPredicate(format: "peakBitRate > 0") which should theoretically match all variants, will the download task attempt to download all matching video variants, or will it still select only one? Summary So the main questions are: Without variantQualifiers, does AVAssetDownloadConfiguration always download a single video variant, and if so, how is it chosen? Does the behavior differ if variants have different resolutions vs only different bitrates? When a predicate matches multiple variants, can multiple video variants actually be downloaded in a single .movpkg? Why might boot.xml list multiple video streams when only one appears to be fully downloaded? Any clarification on the intended behavior would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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UVC over MFi – Is there official support? Implementation guidance?
Hello everyone, I’m looking for more detailed information regarding UVC (USB Video Class) over MFi within the Apple ecosystem and would appreciate some clarification. I’m interested in developing (or interfacing with) an accessory that transmits video over USB using the UVC standard, and I’d like to better understand how this works within the MFi (Made for iPhone) program. Here are my main questions: 1. Do iOS devices provide native support for UVC over USB-C or Lightning within the MFi framework? 2. Are there any specific firmware or authentication requirements when the accessory is MFi-certified? 3. Does UVC support depend solely on the hardware interface (USB-C vs Lightning), or are there additional software-level requirements? 4. Is there any official documentation outlining the recommended flow for implementing UVC-based video capture accessories on iOS? From what I understand, USB-C iPads appear to offer more direct support for standard UVC devices, but it’s not entirely clear how this integrates with the MFi ecosystem with iOS, especially for commercial product development. If anyone has gone through this process or can point me to relevant technical documentation, I would greatly appreciate the guidance. Thank you!
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