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AVPlayer freezes after ReplaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem + immediate seek on iOS 18.4 (streaming only)
Starting in iOS 18.4, (and still in the iOS 18.5 beta), the AVPlayer seems to freeze when we: Replace the current AVPlayerItem, ReplaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem and then: Call Seek very shortly afterwards (seekToTime:toleranceBefore:toleranceAfter: / seek(to:)) And then subsequent calls to play after have no effect. However, it feels scrubbing to see after works and also changing the playback rate (i.e. fast forward) tends to clear up the frozen state. Our primary workflow involves video playback, replacing video to show new clips and in some cases seeking to specific frames. This appears to only be occurring while streaming video, reports are all that local downloaded video playback remains fine. This same code path has worked without issue on 17.x and 18.3.2 and for years before that. What is particularly strange is that time observers log that video is still playing or feeding frames. The reported status is ReadyToPlay, IsLikelyToKeepUp is true, and there are no indications of stalling or buffering. A similar issue is true for our web application in Safari. While on Sonoma and Safari 17.x, there is no issue. When you update to macOS Sequoia 15.4.1 and Safari 18.4, you begin observing a similar freezing. The same does not occur on Chrome or other tested browsers. There appears to be in the release notes for Safari 18.4, an interesting "fix" note that seems similar to what we are now experiencing: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-18_4-release-notes "Fixed an issue where playback doesn’t always resume after a seek. (140097993)" "Fixed playing video generating non-monotonic ‘timeupdate’ events. (142275184) (FB16222910)" "Fixed websites calling play() during a seek() is allowed by the specification so that the play event is fired even if the seek hasn’t completed. (142517488)" "Fixed seek not completing for WebM under some circumstances. (143372794)" "Fixed MediaRecorderPrivateEncoder writing frames out of order. (143956063)"
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190
May ’25
Inquiries about AVPlayer's ABR switching logic and control APIs for HLS/LL-HLS
Hello, I am developing a custom player SDK using AVPlayer to support HLS and LL-HLS live streaming. I have some questions about the internal logic of AVPlayer regarding ABR, as this information is not explicitly covered in the documentation. ABR Switching Logic: Does AVPlayer trigger bitrate switching primarily based on stall occurrences (buffer starvation)? I am curious if the switching logic is reactive to stalls or if it proactively switches to prevent them based on throughput estimation. Developer Controls for ABR: To influence or control the ABR selection, are preferredPeakBitRate and preferredForwardBufferDuration the only properties available to developers? Are there any other recommended APIs to assist with ABR decisions? Thank you for your help.
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464
Jan ’26
VTLowLatencyFrameInterpolationConfiguration supported dimensions
Is there limits on the supported dimension for VTLowLatencyFrameInterpolationConfiguration. Querying VTLowLatencyFrameInterpolationConfiguration.maximumDimensions and VTLowLatencyFrameInterpolationConfiguration.minimumDimensions returns nil. When I try the WWDC sample project EnhancingYourAppWithMachineLearningBasedVideoEffects with a 4k video this statement try frameProcessor.startSession(configuration: configuration) executes but try await frameProcessor.process(parameters: parameters) throws error Error Domain=VTFrameProcessorErrorDomain Code=-19730 "Processor is not initialized" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Processor is not initialized}. Also, why is VTLowLatencyFrameInterpolationConfiguration able to run while app is backgrounded but VTFrameRateConversionParameters can't (due to gpu usage)?
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409
Dec ’25
Importing pictures with non-QT metadata
Movies taken with Android phones store their location metadata (and probably others) in ways that are ignored by Apple's ecosystem (QuickTime Player, Photos.app). I am considering creating a Spotlight importer so that this metadata is available to the sytem. But I have a couple of questions: Can a Spotlight importer add new data (like location) to the data that the standard importer already captured? Or would the new importer need to take over the whole data gathering? If so, would macOS allow that? Would that Spotlight importer be somehow used by e.g. Photos.app and QT Player to capture the location? Or would this end up in Spotlight "knowing" the location but Photos.app ignoring it? If so, maybe there is something more broadly useful than a Spotlight importer?
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192
May ’25
Unable to Fetch Videos from Recently Deleted Album Using Photos Framework in iOS 18.3.1
Hello everyone, I’m working on an iOS app that fetches videos from the "Recently Deleted" album using the Photos framework in Swift. However, I’m unable to fetch any videos, even though the "Recently Deleted" album contains 233 items (including videos), as seen in the Photos app. Environment: iOS Version: 18.3.1 Xcode Version: 16.2 Swift Version: Swift 5 Device: iPhone (simulator and physical device both tested) Photo Library Permission: "All Photos" access granted Recently Deleted Lock: Face ID/Passcode is disabled for "Recently Deleted"
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154
Mar ’25
Logged error/warning in FigCaptureSourceRemote when capturing a photo
I'm using this library: https://github.com/Yummypets/YPImagePicker to capture photos. I've modified it slightly, and I'm using an older version. When testing on my iPhone 16e, ios 26, whenever I take a photo, I get the following two error messages: <<<< FigXPCUtilities >>>> signalled err=-17281 at <>:302 <<<< FigCaptureSourceRemote >>>> Fig assert: "err == 0 " at bail (FigCaptureSourceRemote.m:569) - (err=-17281) These error messages appear, but as far as I can tell, the photo comes through OK, and I can save the data no problem. I've even removed all my handling code to see if it was something I was doing. I don't really want to ship with these errors showing, but I also have no idea what can be causing this error to appear. chatgpt was not helpful diagnosing this. Does anyone know what can cause this error Is there a way I can see the source code to figure out if there's something I'm doing wrong here? It really seems like this is an internal apple error, or else I would have expected more details on the error relating to the code I've written. Any clues would be appreciated!
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766
Dec ’25
Sound not working on testflight / Appstore
I have a flutter iOS app that has some simple sound FX for button clicks, swipes, etc. In simulator and on real device the sound works fine, but when i upload the app to testflight (and App store) the sound FX don't play. When I upload the app to my phone via xcode I am using the release profile so I don't see what the difference could be. I have also gone through the archive that i uploaded and verified that the sound files are indeed there. I have other flutter apps that use sound but non since the iOS 26 update. I've tried 3 different flutter sound libraries and all face the same issue. Wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue or if I'm missing a simple permission or something that has changed recently? Thanks in advanced
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232
Dec ’25
Does CMIO support "hide" build-in camera
Hi guys, Can I use CMIO to achieve the following feature on macOS when a USB device (Camera/Mic/Speaker) is connected: When a third-party video conferencing app is not in a meeting, ensure the app defaults to using the USB device (Camera/Mic/Speaker). When a third-party conferencing app is in a meeting, ensure the app automatically switches to the USB device (Camera/Mic/Speaker).
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269
Jul ’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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402
Nov ’25
Apple Music Artist - genres
The documentation for the Apple Music API indicates that the genreNames field for a given artist (see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi/artists/attributes-data.dictionary) is an array of strings. However, it only appears as though you return ONE SINGLE GENRE per Artist, regardless of how many genres might be attached to that artist's albums. Am I missing something? Is there an artist where multiple genres may be returned, or is this a bug in the documentation?
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547
Jul ’25
AVPlayer: escaped characters displayed wrong from WebVTT subtitles (HLS)
quotes are displayed incorrectly in subtitles of AVPlayerViewController when streaming VOD content using HLS. single quote ' (escaped ') is displayed as apos; double quotes " (escaped ") is displayed as quot; following the vtt specification. The same stream works fine in VLC player, showing quotes correctly in subtitles. subtitle vtt files use Content-Type: text/vtt WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:490014:06:04.000,MPEGTS:158764568760056 example line: 490014:05:46.000 --> 490014:05:50.440 align:start line:83% position:14% and the playlist has: #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="subs",LANGUAGE="da",NAME="Dansk",AUTOSELECT=YES,CHARACTERISTICS="public.accessibility.transcribes-spoken-dialog,public.accessibility.describes-music-and-sound",URI="subs/dan_5/playlist.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=780000,CODECS="mp4a.40.5,avc1.42c01e",RESOLUTION=256x144,AUDIO="audio-aac",SUBTITLES="subs" lære dig endnu bedre at kende." adding 'wvtt' to CODECS list in playlist does not make a difference. Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround? I guess the AVResourceLoaderDelegate can be used to intercept and parse the subtitle files, but it seems like quite a hack and not really intended to be used for this.
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289
Dec ’25
Will the new Automix feature in iOS 26 be available for third-party apps using MusicKit?
Hi everyone, We’re currently developing a music-based app using MusicKit, and we recently noticed that iOS 26 beta introduces a new “Automix” feature in the Apple Music app. This enables seamless DJ-style transitions between songs—beyond the standard crossfade functionality. We’re trying to understand: Will this Automix feature be accessible to third-party apps that use MusicKit? If not available in the initial iOS 26 release, is there a plan to expose it through public APIs in a future update? Is there any technical documentation, WWDC session, or roadmap info regarding Automix support via MusicKit? This functionality would be a significant enhancement for our app, especially for intelligent audio transitions and curated playlists. Thanks.
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854
Nov ’25
builtInLiDARDepthCamera doesn't work on the 2020 iPad Pro on iOS 26
On iOS 26.1, this throws on the 2020 iPad Pro (4th gen) but works fine on an M4 iPad Pro or iPhone 15 Pro: guard let device = AVCaptureDevice.default(.builtInLiDARDepthCamera, for: .video, position: .back) else { throw ConfigurationError.lidarDeviceUnavailable } It's just the standard code from Apple's own sample code so obviously used to work: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/AVFoundation/capturing-depth-using-the-lidar-camera Does it fail because Apple have silently dumped support for the older LiDAR sensor used prior to the M4 iPad Pro, or is there another reason? What about the 5th and 6th gen iPad Pro, does it still work on those?
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501
Nov ’25
401 Authorization error for Music Feed API
I've established proper authorization for general music api calls, but when I use that same authorization to retrieve metadata for the latest music feeds (see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicfeed/requesting-a-feed-export), I get a 401 Unauthorized error. As per the documentation, I'm simply issuing a GET against https://api.media.apple.com/v1/feed/album/latest. Are there different entitlements needed for the Music Feed API?
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105
May ’25
I cannot acquire entitlement named com.apple.developer.avfoundation.video-data-output-prepares-cellular-radio-for-machine-readable-code-scanning.
AVCaptureVideoDataOutput.preparesCellularRadioForNetworkConnection requires com.apple.developer.avfoundation.video-data-output-prepares-cellular-radio-for-machine-readable-code-scanning. But I cannot acquire its entitlement. I can't find its entitlement on 'Certificates, Identifiers &amp; Profiles'. Any solutions? Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile: ......" doesn't include the com.apple.developer.avfoundation.video-data-output-prepares-cellular-radio-for-machine-readable-code-scanning entitlement.
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523
Jul ’25
H.265 Decoding with VideoToolBox
I am creating an app that decodes H.265 elementary streams on iOS. I use VideoToolBox to decode from H.265 to NV12. The decoded data is enqueued in the CMSampleBufferDisplayLayer as a CMSampleBuffer. However, nothing is displayed in the VideoPlayerView. It remains black. The decoding in VideoToolBox is successful. I confirmed this by saving the NV12 data in the CMSampleBuffer to a file and displaying it using a tool. Why is nothing displayed in the VideoPlayerView? I can provide other source code as well. // // ContentView.swift // H265Decoder // // Created by Kohshin Tokunaga on 2025/02/15. // import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { VStack { Text("H.265 Player (temp.h265)") .font(.headline) VideoPlayerView() .frame(width: 360, height: 640) // Adjust or make it responsive for iOS } .padding() } } #Preview { ContentView() } // // VideoPlayerView.swift // H265Decoder // // Created by Kohshin Tokunaga on 2025/02/15. // import SwiftUI import AVFoundation struct VideoPlayerView: UIViewRepresentable { // Return an H265Player as the coordinator, and start playback there. func makeCoordinator() -> H265Player { H265Player() } func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UIView { let uiView = UIView(frame: .zero) // Base layer for attaching sublayers uiView.backgroundColor = .black // Screen background color (for iOS) // Create the display layer and add it to uiView.layer let displayLayer = context.coordinator.displayLayer displayLayer.frame = uiView.bounds displayLayer.backgroundColor = UIColor.clear.cgColor uiView.layer.addSublayer(displayLayer) // Start playback context.coordinator.startPlayback() return uiView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView, context: Context) { // Reset the frame of the AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer when the view's size changes. let displayLayer = context.coordinator.displayLayer displayLayer.frame = uiView.layer.bounds // Optionally update the layer's background color, etc. uiView.backgroundColor = .black displayLayer.backgroundColor = UIColor.clear.cgColor // Flush transactions if necessary CATransaction.flush() } } // // H265Player.swift // H265Decoder // // Created by Kohshin Tokunaga on 2025/02/15. // import Foundation import AVFoundation import CoreMedia class H265Player: NSObject, VideoDecoderDelegate { let displayLayer = AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer() private var decoder: H265Decoder? override init() { super.init() // Initial configuration for the display layer displayLayer.videoGravity = .resizeAspect // Initialize the decoder (delegate = self) decoder = H265Decoder(delegate: self) // For simple playback, set isBaseline to true decoder?.isBaseline = true } func startPlayback() { // Load the file "cars_320x240.h265" guard let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "temp2", withExtension: "h265") else { print("File not found") return } do { let data = try Data(contentsOf: url) // Set FPS and video size as needed let packet = VideoPacket(data: data, type: .h265, fps: 30, videoSize: CGSize(width: 1080, height: 1920)) // Decode as a single packet decoder?.decodeOnePacket(packet) } catch { print("Failed to load file: \(error)") } } // MARK: - VideoDecoderDelegate func decodeOutput(video: CMSampleBuffer) { // When decoding is complete, send the output to AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer displayLayer.enqueue(video) } func decodeOutput(error: DecodeError) { print("Decoding error: \(error)") } }
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702
May ’25
PHPhotoLibrary.performChanges completionHandler not called when deleting assets on iOS 26
In my app, I use api provided in Photos framework to delete specified photo. But after upgrading to iOS 26, the delete function in some iOS device no longer work. The api will never triggers the system confirmation dialog, and the completionHandler is never called. In the iOS Photos app, deletion works correctly on the same assets, but calling the API from my app does not work. Steps to Reproduce Make sure the app has Full Photo Library Access. Execute the following code: PHPhotoLibrary.shared().performChanges({ let assetsToBeDeleted = PHAsset.fetchAssets(withLocalIdentifiers: delUrls, options: nil) PHAssetChangeRequest.deleteAssets(assetsToBeDeleted) }, completionHandler: completionHandler) Expected Behavior The system should present a confirmation dialog asking the user to delete the selected photos. After the user confirms, the deletion should occur, and the completionHandler should be called with success or error. Actual Behavior The system delete confirmation dialog does not appear. The completionHandler is never called. Environment iOS Versions: 26.1 / 26.0.1 It looks like api bug. I want to check Is it a know issue and will be fixed. Thanks
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291
Nov ’25
UIDocumentPickerViewController in Audiounit Extension unable to receive touches
Hello, I have an existing AUv3 instrument plugin. In the plug in, users can access files (audio files, song projects) via a UIDocumentPickerViewController In Logic Pro, (and some other hosts, but not all), the document picker is unable to receive touches, while a keyboard case is attached to the iPad. Removing the case (this is an Apple brand iPad case) allows the interactions to resume and allows me to pick files in the usual way. One of my users reports this non-responsive behavior occurs even after disconnecting their keyboard. I have fiddled with entitlements all day, and have determined that is not the issue, since the keyboard disconnection appears to fix it every time for me. Here is my, very boilerplate, presentation code : guard let type = UTType("com.my.type") else { return } let fileBrowser = UIDocumentPickerViewController(forOpeningContentTypes: [type]) fileBrowser.overrideUserInterfaceStyle = .dark fileBrowser.delegate = self fileBrowser.directoryURL = myFileFolderURL() self.present(fileBrowser, animated: true) {
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566
Jul ’25
MusicKit in playgrounds not supported?
Has anyone been able to successfully use MusicCatalogSearchRequest in a playgrounds app? I have configured my playground similar to a regular app: app id with automatic music token generation turned on, music access authorized within the app itself, but whenever I query MusicCatalogSearchRequest I get an error thrown with .developerTokenRequestFailed. Considering musickit is restricted in the sim, it would not surprise me if it was the same in playgrounds but it would be super helpful if I could prototype with musickit in playgrounds 4!
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1.4k
Apr ’25